
LIFE AT 
LAUREL TOWN 



IN 



ANGLO-SAXON KANSAS 



KATE STEPHENS 




CQEXRIGHI OEFOSm 



LIFE ON A FAEM NEAE 
LAUREL TOWN 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



The Greek Spirit 

Workfellowa ia Social Progression 

American Thumb*Print9 

A Woman's Heart 

The Mastering ol Mexico 

Stories from Old Chronicles 

And other books 



LIFE AT 
LAUREL TOWN 

IN 

ANGLO-SAXON KANSAS 



BY 

KATE STEPHENS 

Sometime Profetsor of Greek in the Uaiversity of Kansas 



Our leadintf men are not of much account, and never have 
been, but the average of the people is immenBe. 

Walt Whitman. 

Be folks (peuple). Your only, your real duty, is to 
keep democratic in your heart. 

George Sand, 



HatDtence, Hianjja^ 

ALUMNI ASSOCIATION 

OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS 

1920 



^-' 






f 



Copyright, 1920 
By KATE STEPHENS 



Set up and electrotyped. Published, 1920. 
Limited, large-paper edition. 



§)CLA604339 



'-V 27 I..0 



^\\\3 



LIFE ON A FAEM NEAE 
LAUREL TOWN 



DIONTSUa IN KANSAS 

Make plod! 

The Lord of Growth has come; 

The sun has half his northward journey done. 

And in deep-huried roots moves the Spirit ! 

On the dark-earthed fields 
Fires of last year's husks the farmer kindles—- 
Sacrifices to the Lord of Growth; 
Smoke rises to the l)luer heavens; 

While hawk and solemn crow cut with long wing the spark- 
ling air. 
And little birds do sing, *'Rejoice! 
Rejoice! the Springing Life is here!** 

Mounting sap now brightens trunk of tree and vine; 
And every tip^most ttvig swells out its leaf -buds. 

The peach puts forth her bitter-tinted pink; 
Redbud empurples far each wooded stretch; 
And, by the magic of the Lord of Spring, 
Stand orchards, very ghosts of winter snoxcs, lohite-cloaked 
in blossom. 

Wheat, O sisters, greens in our rolling glebe! 
And com, O brothers, springs from its golden seed! 

For Sun-Warmth, and Wind-Strength, and Praise-God-Rain 

Are abroad in our land; 

Three builders of worlds, with the Spirit, 

Go forth hand in hand. 

Make glad! 

The Lord of Growth has come; 

The sun has near his northward journey run, 

And in deep-buried roots moves Life-Ever-Living! 



LIFE ON A FARM NEAR LAUREL TOWN 



From heights of Kansas City the lands rolling 
westward gleamed like a Land of Beulah that 
spring my Father first saw Kansas. Civil War 
had ended. Peace had come. 

And a Kansas spring was burgeoning — ^the 
verdure of April, indescribably luscious May 
days, June air fragrant with wild grape blos- 
soms and musical with stir of leaves. As the 
traveler watched and waited on Kansas City 
bluffs, and later turned his horse's head towards 
Paola and Laurel Town, the soiPs promise of 
overmastering harvests delighted him. 

A certain melancholy which broods over the 
state, greater in the western than eastern part, a 
genius loci, induced, perhaps, by the seemingly 
unending stretch of fertile earth, a broad sky 
shutting down like an inverted bowl and sug- 
gesting the impenetrability of heaven — some- 
times conveying by massing of clouds, fierce 
winds and rains, vaultings of IJghltning an-l 

3 



4 LIFE ON A FARM 

voices of tliunder, the impression that demiurgic 
forces are about to unite and grind to nothing 
the puny works of man — this reverse of the lov- 
ing exuberance of Kansas nature affected the 
traveler slightly. 

Then, too, the people at the time of his com- 
ing settled, and settling, in this rich environ- 
ment — a people for the most part of the blood 
of Anglo-Saxon state-makers, a democracy sav- 
ing to the world the traditions and courage of 
their forefathers; ranchers and lovers of live 
stock, farmers and such fosterers of growing 
grain that, like the Hebrew Job of old, they 
never *^let thistles grow instead of wheat, and 
cockle instead of barley" ; farmers as farms were 
in those days; not seeking to specialize, as in 
this of ours, but growing a little of every farm 
thing for their families' needs and comforts; 
having their own orchards, their own berry 
bushes, their own vegetable gardens, their own 
chickens, pigs, cows and even sheep. 

Sometimes these people were children of 
frontier dwellers for generations, cradled in 
supplies so slender that they had developed a 
godlike energy, an amazing adaptability, and 
what it might be unjust to call insensibility to 
finer shadings and yet was not wholly stoicism 
of feeling. 



NEAE LAUREL TOWN O 

Also tliere were the citizens — craft folks, pro- 
fessional folk, gathered in the community of tiny 
towns where no man owned material advantage 
over his neighbor, and therefore was not apt to 
assume to himself airs of superiority. 

This people, identical in ethics and language, 
identical in political ends, my Father thought 
as free a democracy as the world had ever seen, 
alert of intellect, restless in experiment, 
inebriate of optimism, self-confident to an aston- 
ishing degree, earnest in our American faith in 
education and local self-government; and loyal 
to the ideas of our f oreparents who looked upon 
government as a form to which they, exercising 
their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of 
happiness, contributed support and delegated 
their authority, not a system from which they 
might draw maintenance and patronage. 

Parasitic peoples, those not led by spiritual 
vigor and spiritual truth — people who go where 
wealth is merely because wealth is there, fervent 
solely for themselves, ignorant of the institu- 
tions of our country, or disregardful of their 
meaning in any other significance than affording 
them a protected dwelling place and opportunity 
to make money; and also parasitic institutions 
which establish themselves and fatten on present 
human labor and accumulations of past labors 



6 LIFE ON A FASM 

— in those days, in Kansas, they were too few to 
count. 

These two makers of environment, the mag- 
nificence of nature and the spirit of Anglo- 
Saxon statemakers, led my Father to cast his 
lot in the state when an invalidism settled upon 
him and made change of climate needful. 

Years hef ore, in New York, he was a lawyer 
with a lucrative practice. When President 
Lincoln sent out the call of the 15th of April, 
1861, for seventy-five thousand volunteers, how- 
ever, he at once locked his office-doors and went 
enlisting men for defense of the Union. 

Not many days later his recruits assemhled 
in the main street of the snug, little village — 
it was a bright, spring morning and wives and 
children, and folks from the neighhoring hills, 
were there to see. Drums beat attention, two 
or three men stepped forward and presenting 
him with a captain's sword buckled it round his 
waist, and the company set forth for war. 

** Marched from Martinsburg [Virginia] to 
Bunkerhill," he wrote in his diary, under July 
15th. *' Marched to Charlestown/' July 17th. 
** Marched to Harper's Ferry," July 20th. 
'* Battle of Lovettsville," August 8th; and two 
days later, **Went to Baltimore sick.'' 

When able to travel he came home ** suffering 



NEAR LAUBEL TOWN 7 

from fever, neuralgia and general prostration 
resulting from severe service/' the army-sur- 
geon stated. By merit of home, and rest, he so 
far recovered as to resume practice of law. 

But after a couple of years the doctors found 
him invalided by war's aftermath, tuberculosis 
of the lungs. They gave him *Hwo years to 
live" (a child standing by overheard their sen- 
tence), and sent him south for benefits of open- 
air healing. 

The south, totally disrupted, proved hostile 
to his family traditions. He saw he must seek 
an environment other, in spiritual lines, if he 
were once more to have wife and children with 
him. So, urging his horse northward, delaying 
sometime in Missouri because of its attractive 
face, but there, also, finding hatred of his home 
and people, he finally came to Kansas City, and 
from its heights looked out over fat lands roll- 
ing westward. 

Country life Pater had always loved. Years 
before, when practising law in New York, a farm 
some thirty miles from his office delighted him, 
and to its pleasantnesses he would often go, 
spending the day in the open, la^dng out work 
for its men. Besides gratifying his taste for 
close touch with the land's beauty and for 
thought, such outings increased his frail body's 



8 LIFE ON A FARM 

strength. And now, when need of spending his 
days out of doors had shut him off from his 
profession, he determined to he a farmer, 
theoretical if not practical, hut practical as far 
as possihle. 

The land he chose for our home, summing 
ahout two hundred and thirty acres, lying north- 
ward of and adjoining Laurel Town, had many 
features unusual to a Kansas farm ; for instance, 
in its upland and lowland. And from the main- 
traveled road on the west line, to the Kansas 
river and skirting willows on the east, it held 
some especially lovely spots. 

Wooded ground which had never known the 
plough lay on its southern horder, along a little 
amher stream called ** brewery brook," and on 
the north a like band of primeval forest 
stretched from highway to river. Nature had 
planted the woods after her sweet fashion of 
making her garden, and in the shadow of the 
trees wild geranium and columbine blossomed, 
and wind-flowers nodded, and purple violets 
carpeted the ground in spring. 

The most striking figure of the south woods 
was a black walnut standing with a girth of 
toward twenty feet — rising in masjesty ^nd 
aloofness so apart from its brothers, and their 
shade, that the sun had roimded its branches to 



NEAR LAUEEL TOWN y 

an almost perfect globe. A little way off a 
ravine intersecting this woodland ran north, and 
south, and a sycamore, laid low by some wind, 
had spanned the gully. Upon the sycamore^s 
satiny bark we walked across when river-waters 
filled the ravine in time of flood — there, too, 
warm afternoons in spring, when frogs were 
chorusing and water-bugs skating, I found a 
good place for studying Virgil. 

Such little localities as these Pater especially 
loved, and, as winters passed and springs 
neared, he spent many a day in their company, 
himself gaining vigor; here rescuing from de- 
formity some young tree caught by freakish 
winds and pinned under a weight, there slipping 
pruning knife at a root he knew to be noxious. 

Than the coming of spring in Kansas nothing 
can be more beautiful. It is day after day of 
perfection. Winds do blow over rolling lands. 
Even in February, as if conscious of a mighty 
secret they purpose later to reveal, they begin 
a hollow murmur, and dip down chimneys, and 
slap house-tops and loosen cornices. Not all days 
are calm. 

Neither are all days warm. Frosts dart from 
upper airs. 

But tree-trunks brighten, and the onward 
push of beauty is so superb — color in sky and 



10 LIFE ON A FABM 

budding things ; the very soil gleams back at you 
— so overwhelming in voice of lowing calf and 
whinnying mare, amorous birds and wild, sweet- 
scented winds, there is no telliag in words. 

All leading to May — to the earth inwrought 
with violets, flowering star-grasses, mandrake, 
yellow blossoms of the oxalis, native blue phlox. 
And above this carpet from the Eternal's loom, 
tree and shrub leafed in rose-velvet or fresh 
green, thrushes fluting, mourning dove lament- 
ing passion to mate, and the meadow-lark 

"Scattering his loose notes in the waste of air." 

With June ahead! Eipe-eared wheat-fields 
shadowed by clouds drifting across the sky. 
Lakes of com, their dark-green blades swishing 
drowsily, like little waves lapping pebbly shores, 
and whispering prophecies of September ker- 
nels. Myriads of bees booming their wares 
(just as brokers do) as they pass from clover- 
globe to purple clover-globe and then whirl away 
to hive their stores. 

Where, round a fecund earth, can you find 
sight more enchanting! — a heaven of sapphire 
blue on-spurring fruits of an ambitious, up-send- 
ing soil and their message for the furthering 
of man; standing from dawn till that veiling 
hour when grey sphinx-moth and ruby-throated 



NEAB LAXJEEIi TOWN 11 

linminiiig-bird search their supper in the cup of 
the trumpet-flower. 

Those closings of the day, at times, especially 
in May and June, forerun by rainbows, we often 
gathered, like a group of Parsees, to watch the 
sky's tumbling, tumultuary vapors — billows 
crimson, golden, amethyst, sea-green and soft 
greys shading to black ; or a gleaming globe, im- 
attended by cloud seraphim, sinking in solitary 
splendor behind the western hills. 

We also knew early mornings in summer when 
the sun struck the river, and brightened its 
waters tiU they shone out behind the fringing 
willows and made a silver ribbon binding the 
land. And in depths of winter, too, when 
** Phoebus 'gan to rise," we watched for the two 
misty sun-dogs who would now and then start 
him on another circuit of the heavens. 

One of our family cults was finding the earl- 
iest dog-tooth violet. Days in February we 
would notice winter silences giving way to those 
mysterious voices which bespeak the spring 
theophany near; and then we would slip off 
without others' knowledge to turn leaf-mould in 
the woods, or to lift fallen boughs from warm 
bank-sides, heckling our brains to recall where 
we had noted the sturdiest plants. As weeks 
went on our hunt grew more thorough, and some- 



12 LIFE ON A FAEM 

times of a biting morning, we plunged out of 
doors to see if the plant we had chosen had not, 
coaxed by warm airs of the day before, put forth 
a pale bell, nodding now in spite of bitter skies. 
In this contest Pater commonly came off victor, 
and offered the firstling, eyes dancing and fine 
mouth smiling to our: **You are a winner, 
Daddy! Where you found it I don't see." 
From that hour spring had come. 

The legended redbud also marked the year's 
incoming tide. I still recall mornings when re- 
port went at breakfast that one of the trees had 
garmented itself in imperial colors, amid a group 
of pawpaws and coffee-beans down on the south 
bank — to one redbud slipping roots in level 
ground you will find an aspiring ten loving to 
climb the broken side of a hill. Redbuds be- 
speak Kansas. That April morning the train 
rolled up the valley bearing us to our new home, 
our fascinated eyes saw first the Kaw silvering 
on our left, and then, on the right, ridges far and 
woods near blotched with the purple of the 
lovely tree. 

Many another growth witnessed to the beauty 
through which nature speaks in Kansas. On a 
little rise between our house and Laurel Town, 
at the edge of the highway, just outside the 
fence and therefore public property, a wild crab 



NEAR lAURKL TOWN 13 

lifted its warty trunk. It was a sturdy little 
fellow, tlie tree, not so tall as wild crabs some- 
times grow, but making up for its dwarfish 
stature by a particularly beautiful and sym- 
metrical umbrella of branches and foliage. vWe 
loved the wilding, just as you love some cher- 
ished growth, and Pater protected its sturdiness, 
60 far as he was able ; and also its comrade, the 
weaker mandrake, that grew close to and 
straight up from its foot. 

A number of springs, as we drove to and from 
town, we watched for the coming of the crab- 
blossoms and mandrake, and when they did set 
out their wonders, we would climb from what- 
ever we were riding in, buggy, phaeton or red 
wagon, to look closer at the pallor of mandra- 
gora hiding herself in her own heavy shade, and 
the crab-buds holding forth their auroral pink. 
Somehow we never thought of picking or tear- 
ing the blossoms — ^that would have seemed dese- 
cration ; an expectancy of the future and regard 
'for others' rights forbade. 

But at last, in an election, a new roadmaster 
(I think that was the name the law gave him) 
came into power — a man, I fancy, who endeav- 
ored to do his duty in whatever place it pleased 
heaven to call him, and to do it thoroughly. 
Leastwise, one day, when we were all gone about 



14 LIFE ON A FAEM 

OUT various duties and no one by to defend the 
helpless, this roadmaster came with a squad of 
malefactors (they called themselves road- 
makers) and they cut down the crab tree and 
drove a scoop shovel over the mandrake. 

Back in the centuries, ancestors of ours had 
a legend that mandrakes cry when wrenched 
from their soil. 

"And shrieks like mandrakes, torn out of the earth, 
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad," 

said Romeo's Juliet. 

What wail did our mandrake send forth that 
morning, I wonder! 

But those road-makers did not run mad. They 
were mad before they destroyed the beauty 
nature had, for reasons nature alone knows, 
paired in intimacy. Barren ignorance only 
pardons their act. They gained nothing by 
their havoc, save another stretch of plastic clay, 
ready for gullying by Kansas down-pours; not 
protected even by such substitutes as nature in 
helpful mood is able to plant in Kansas — sumach 
and buckberry, mullein and butterfly weed, and 
the old, native blue-stem grass. 

The cutting off of crab and mandrake, beauty- 
bringing, not offending, proved one of our early 
disillusionings. 



NEAE lATJBEL TOWN 15 

n 

We had gone to the farm to stay by it. Pater 
was not satisfied with all he found at hand, 
however. He remembered with affection 
growths of his old home, and he sent to Roches- 
ter, Philadelphia, Marblehead and other nnrs- 
ery-centres for many a tree, shrub, vine and 
vegetable. Orchard planting with him was al- 
most a passion; and he imported varieties of 
trees he thought fitted for the Kansas climate. 

One afternoon I recall, when he and another 
lover of apples whose name I am not so fortu- 
nate to bear in memory — ^how the two walked 
about young plantations in the mellow fall sun- 
shine discussing sorts new to pomologists, affec- 
tionately rubbing palm over a sapling's bark, 
opening knife now and then to strike off a sucker, 
and finally picking first fruits and going with 
heaping hands and pockets to the dining room 
for sampling. They had kindly included me in 
the excursion, and after I got silver-bladed 
knives for cutting the fruit (for that metal 
would resist the acid of the apple and not defect 
the taste), they invited my opinion as to flavor, 
tenderness and succulency of meat, and other 
points worth attention in the product of Eve's 
goodliest tree. 



16 LIFE ON A FARM 

Among his importadons of beauty, and not 
of practical use, tbat we regarded with special 
affection was a fringe or smokebush which 
[Kansas suns forced to luxuriant proportions; 
and among roses a ** perpetual bloomer," as cata- 
logues say, which we knew by the name of 
** Madame Laffay." The rose had a modest 
turn of petal, as well as a deep pink color and 
fragrant scent, and served Pater in his habit of 
picking a flower and laying it by the breakfast 
or dinner plate of some member of the family. 
The tray that bore food to the one of us confined 
to a sick-room often carried his greetings of a 
** Madame Laffay" — one such tray laden with 
tender shoots he had searched the asparagus bed 
to find, I remember; and there beside the toast 
lay his good wishes, the rose. 

In years since then all these growths have 
perished — not only trees and shrubs of practi- 
cal value, but of touching history. Where stood 
an orchard from which winds of early May bore 
through our house the fragrance of apple blos- 
soms and whitened the grass with fallen petals, 
succulent alfalfa was lately growing. But he 
who cut down the orchards (alas!) had at least 
one pleasure — for we learned long before, at 
times trimmers were lopping branches, that 
apple-tree wood bums brightly in a fireplace. 



NEAR LAUREL. TOWN 17 

and when tlie wind curls do^^ii tlie chimney of a 
gn^ty cvoTiing in November, and send wlii:ffs of 
smoke into the room, its scent is delicious. 

Although he had bought other farms lying 
across the river, on the home-place Pater spent 
his love of the growth of things. Renters, 
testifying to their skill in husbandry and vaunt- 
ing the richness of the soil, might bring water- 
melons weighing more than fifty pounds from 
^'^Vhite Turkey'^; or from ^^ Hawk's Nest" bags 
of astonishing yams and com in its day of per- 
fection for the hungry tooth (such ears as our 
negro friends used to call ^^roastin' years'' ), 
nothing could swerve his loyalty from the home- 
place. 

In propagation he wanted to improve breeds, 
and he introduced strains of blood new to Kan- 
sas. Mares of good pedigree he brought from 
the old New York home ; and cows of Shorthorn 
variety he imported to better beef grown for 
market. Each offspring of these animals we 
rejoiced in and would discuss through a meal- 
time what name it should bear. 

None of us, however, seemed so successful as 
Pater in hitting the right descriptive ; as 
*'Miggles," after Bret Harte's heroine, for a 
grey colt; ^^ Beauty" for a Shorthorn calf, per- 
fect in color and outline; *'Lucy Lightfoot" for 



18 LIFE ON A FARM 

a gazelle-like, chestnuit-sorel colt. A bull he 
named * * Robert Bums'* because of certain lines 
of the poet about a rantin', roarin' laddie. In 
one instance alone do I remember that I suc- 
ceeded with a name — ^when a tiger-striped 
tramp-cat took up abode with us and I dubbed 
her **Sallie Brass'' because, especially in face, 
she so much resembled that heroine of Dickens ; 
and, on looking at the cat, friends, with a burst 
of laughter, said they easily traced the likeness. 

Pigs our farm bred by scores, and although 
about those interesting and sagacious animals, 
who loved their freedom of broad fields and 
crunched yellow com with amazing gusto, my 
knowledge is somewhat hazy, I know I am safe 
in saying they were of the Berkshire breed — 
yet in my mind's eye I seem, also, to see certain! 
smooth sides of the Poland China. 

The comeliness of the piglings in their early 
days, their slickest of black satin skins, their 
shrewdest of wits, their cunningest of eyes and 
hungriest of ** tummies" — ^how could one forget 
the wights ! What a sight it was when a mother 
threw herself on her side with half-shut eyes of 
rest and satisfaction in motherdom, and h'9r 
brood fell to rooting, squealing and crowding 
for their suppers ! Was ever natural sight more 
mirth-provoking to on-lookers watching over the 



yEAB laueeij town 19 

fence, or satisfactory to actors themselves I 
With what appetite did the tiny, scarefnl 
scamperers pump their milk! — and when they 
had their snrfeit run grunting to a bundle of 
straw and pack together for sleep ! 

In poultry Pater brought in brilliant-plumaged 
Spanish pheasants. The shell of their eggs had 
a peculiar translucence, which, we used to say, 
made them look like pearls. Each industrious 
hen was apt to meet her duty of laying an egg 
a day, except in midwinter. But then we may 
have been gifted with that power Auntie Lee 
said her owner ascribed to northerners: ^'De 
Yankees cozen de hens to make four eggs out o' 
three.*' 

Through our Father's fondness for animals 
and household-pets we had always various sorts 
indoors as well as out. Our adventures with 
their personalities would fill a book of days. 
Most wonderful of them all, I think, was a little 
hybrid who inherited a half-shaggy tail and 
upright ears from his milk-white, finely propor- 
tioned. Spitz mama, Nipha (named after the 
Greek word for snow), and for the rest the short 
hair and colors of his black-and-tan terrier sire. 
That he came to be an important member of the 
family would seem all the odder, if you knew 
my Father's care for fine strain in his dumb 



20 LIFE ON A FABM 

friends. But this little fellow won his way by 
sheer truth and sincerity, his affection and un- 
swerving loyalty; qualities he doubtless inher- 
ited from his lady dam. 

He answered to John in everyday life, but 
his full-sized title was Jonathan Edwards, be- 
cause, just as the distinguished divine of that 
name, at an exceedingly precocious age, inter- 
ested himself in his days' burning question of 
freedom of the will, so this black-and-tan ter- 
rier, when a few weeks old, finding himself alone 
in the library, fell to riddling a pamphlet which 
treated nineteenth-century views of Liberty and 
Necessity. 

As the little creature grew in months and 
years, he came to be the canniest of all dumb 
creatures we had ever known. His knowledge 
passed canniness — it was uncanny. All things 
touching life about him he understood. Even if, 
knowing his eyes were shining and upright ears 
listening, you in circumlocutory phrase asked 
the man to bring up your horse at a certain 
hour, John knew; and just about that hour he 
would have pressing business calling him out of 
the house. 

TVhen he had induced you to open the door, 
and with apparent indifference and dignified 
slowness had walked to the edge of the porch. 



NEAR LA.XJBEL TOWN 21 

he would, after a moment's leisurely survey of 
the landscape, set out clipping for the recesses 
of a hedge a little distance away. You would 
turn your horse's head towards town and drive 
past the hedge. Then John would suddenly 
materialize. If you did not want his company, 
you could not force him back, tell the truth as 
you might. 

At last, wearied of exhorting him settled on 
his haunches and eying you with a countenance 
which said, ** Suppose you have done with all 
this chinning and go on^' — ^when finally lyou 
drove forward, he would drop in the rear of 
your phaeton and pay whatever visits you paid, 
going in with you, sitting dose to your knee, 
and listening with only an occasional yawn. In 
spite of the yawn he may not have found your 
wit so intollerahly dull; '^When I play with my 
cat," said Montaigne, **who knows whether I do 
not make her more sport than she makes me!" 

After my Father went on the bench, John 
seemed to find he must accompany the Judge 
every day court sat and roads were not muddy — 
not in muddy weather, for he was exceedingly 
neat about his person, and such days he would 
look drearily down the road and stay behind. 
Keeping clean was an instinct of his. When 
occasion had forced him in the wet Kansas clay. 



22 LIFE ON A FAKM 

he would glance from his feet to you and stand 
with a deprecatory expression on his sensitive 
face, till, from sheer laughter and pity you fell 
to and helped him restore the neatness he 
loved. 

A storm might come when he was in Laurel 
Town. Then, oftenest, he would drop away 
from his master, take the sidewalk direct to my 
sister, Mrs. Green's house, announce himself hy 
a characteristic pawing at an entrance, and when 
the door opened go in and pass the night as her 
guest, staying sometimes more than one night 
if the roads kept bad; hut in three days, even 
with **mud more 'n bootleg deep" ( as one of 
our black aunties once described the mire) pick- 
ing his way home with crestfallen looks and 
pleas of forgiveness in every line of his small 
body. He could not ride in a wagon because its 
motion upset him. 

As I have intimated, John had a most extraor- 
dinary sense of time — ^the time of day — and 
if, when my Father was holding court, the usual 
hour for adjoui?nment had passed, the little 
rascal would issue from a private room, and go 
to the Judge and strike him with a forepaw on 
the knee. Lawyers practising in the court told 
me this, and that Pater would pat the dog's head 
and answer, ''Yes, John, after a while"; when 



NEAE LA"CTIEL TOWN 23 

John would stifle his impatience with another 
nap. 

John as house-dog companioned an out-door 
colUe named Tony Weller. Between the two 
lay an unswerving affection and days in the 
colder months, when John stayed at home, Tony 
would come upon the porch and invite him to go 
hunting — for Tony was excessively fond of the 
Nimrod business. In such weather they com- 
monly planned their chase through the long 
windows (Tony on the outside, as I said, John 
within with forepaws on the window sill and 
hind feet on the floor,) and by varying their 
tones, turning and twisting eyes and ears and 
heads, wagging tails, lolling out tongues and 
making other subtle motions of the body, seem- 
ingly fitted details to a T ; sometimes they even 
rubbed their noses on the window pane, but that 
may have been due to their anticipations of 
pleasures of the chase. Friends seeing their 
antics for the first time could hardly believe our 
explanation; **Tony is asking John to go hunt- 
ing.'' 

Tony did not initiate these expeditions. Be- 
fore Tony's day Sir Nicholas Tubbus, a liver- 
colored, short-haired hunting dog had played 
the game with John — he earned the name of Sir 
Nicholas because as a puppy he was the vera 



24 LIFE ON A FARM 

ould Nick, and Tubbus on the ground of bis be- 
ing a vat, a tub, for food, sometimes licking bis 
platter clean and then curling round it and 
groaning from repletion. But Tubbus was more 
saturnine in preparing for the chase ; in accord 
with the heavy, wordless, melancholy disposition 
common to those who eat large meals and chew 
their food little. Tony's Scottish vivacity and 
vigor gave more color to hunting preliminaries. 

"V^Hien they had settled as to the sally, John's 
habit was to ask whoever chanced at hand to 
open the doors for him, and the twa dogs would 
trot away side by side. In colder weather they 
would commonly make a bee-line for a corn- 
field, and to some shack where rabbits had set 
up a bunny nursery and housekeeping. 

At this juncture the cleverness of their plan- 
ning became still clearer to mere humans, for 
John, much the smaller of the two, would enter 
the hole the rabbits had made in the shack, and 
upon his burrowing the game would start forth 
— leaping into the lion's mouth, poor rabbits! 
For Tony, waiting in intense excitement at the 
door of the passage, caught each one and broke 
its back. 

Oftenest they would bring what booty they 
had bagged up to the house, and, with gleaming 
eyes and considerable appearance of fatigue, lay 



NEAR LAUREIi TOWN 25 

it on the ground. John would then paw at a 
door, and on entering would' attract attention by, 
looking steadfastly in the face of whomsoever 
he found and running to door or window — ^invit- 
ing to a view of the chase's trophies, that is. 
The hunters' gratification lay in their receiving 
approving pats and hearing themselves called 
**good boys" for their help in reducing the gird- 
lers of young apple trees and other growths. 
Little happening like these lightened our days. 



in 

Oversight of land, increase of basket and of 
flock bring the homier things to a farm's family. 
My Father's frail body and life-long habits of 
study permitted little physical labor. Driving 
a pair of horses from the seat of a mower and 
reaper one summer morning I remember seeing 
him ; and the few times the picturesque thresh- 
ing machine set up its engine and broad chute 
beside the stone bam, he stood not far off count- 
ing bags of wheat and jotting in his diary. 

So with other members of the family — our 
lending a hand to the farming came about only 
by some spontaneity, some whimisey. Every 
day the children who were at home drove off to 



26 LIFE ON A FAKM 

Laurel Town, preparing to -enter, or already 
matriculated at the university. Treasures of 
other peoples, other centuries and other lands 
had captivated us ; and our parents, loyal to the 
ardor for education inherited of their old New 
England blood, gave us free leash and furthered 
our zeal to their utmost. 

Therefore, just as a story of a larger human 
society tells not only of its political economies, 
but also of its people's inward life, their spirit's 
wonder at this mysterious world, its beauty, its 
truth ; so this half-told tale of the microcosm of 
a farm must, in some slight way, speak of the 
purely inward action of its dwellers. Mental 
and imaginative life to many natures is the best 
part of their days. 

We were readers. Novels then appearing — 
of George Eliot, Charles Reade, Wilkie Collins, 
Walter Besant, Victor Hugo and others — came 
to our hands; and periodicals from New York 
and Boston. For instance, every week we 
anxiously waited the serialized ** Mystery of 
Edwin Drood." And dark and unhappy was the 
June day that brought news of the passing of 
its author. 

Charles Dickens dead ! His pen fallen ! How 
could all be as before ! Why did the sun shine ! 
Why the birds sing ! That slender figure whose 



NEAE LAUBEIi TOWN 27 

every movement we had watched in hushed awe ! 
That mellow voice to which we had rapturously- 
listened ! Never again to tell **The Christmas 
Carol" ! Never again the laughter-moving trial 
of Bardell versus Pickwick! Why should he, 
wonder-worker, lie motionless at Gad's Hill, and 
weak and worthless lives cumber the earth? In 
the great scheme of justice how could it be 1 

But weeping under Kansas cottonwoods; 
questioning the sky; listening to the threnody 
of the winds' voices — tears never yet restored a 
maker of the magic of literature. Not even so 
long ago as when, in old Trinacria, his work- 
fellow lamented the end of the singing of Bion : 

"Begin ye, Muses of Sicily, begin the dirge !" 

Evenings on a farm are, or were, aptly lacking 
in vacuous liveliness, such entertainment aa 
lighter, or merrier, natures afford. Our short 
hours were of reading and music. Our Mother 
had a voice of unusual sweetness and sympathy, 
and she sometimes sang with us, in the carmina 
sacra we Americans inherit from colonial fore- 
bears, parts she had known in her childhood in 
the city of New York. 

Other times Pater would, with piano accom- 
paniment take ** Scots wha ha' wi* Wallace 
bled," ** Bonnie Boon," ** Mary's Dream,'* 



28 UFE ON A FABM 

** Sweet Afton" and a hundred others. Then, 
too, he had humorous solos, such as **Vilikens 
and his Dinah;" and American melodies like 
*^ Uncle Ned," *^ Nelly Gray," *V01d Folks at 
Home," and the soft-voiced 

"On a floating scow of Ole Vlrginy, 

I worked from day to day, 

A-fishin' amongst the oyster-beds, 

To me it was but play. 

But now I'm old, and feeble too, 

I cannot work any more; 

So carry me back to Ole Virginy, 

To Ole Virginy shore." 

From one book, so aged that its music stood 
in ** buckwheat" notes, we took English martial 
tunes, as **The Moonlight March," with Bishop 
Heber's 

"I see them on their winding way, 
About their ranks the moonbeams play ; 
Their lofty deeds and daring high, 
Blend with the notes of victory ; 
And waving arms and banners bright 
Are glancing in the mellow light." 

I speak with partici^Jarity because I have 
heard foreigners, in our country to gain a better 
living than they could get in their birthlands, by 
speech and mannerisms constantly endeavoring 
to assure us that they were not Americans — ^I 



NEAB LAUKEL TOWN 29 

have heard salad-minded foreigners (the salad 
Buffering an overdose of vinegar) repeatedly 
declare we Americans had no music, ** except 
Yankee Doodle/* before they projected their 
shallow egotism in onr midst. 

My sister played with no little brilliance con- 
cert pieces then in vogue, and had for her field 
Scottish melodies and Chopin's nocturnes; 
while I ranged in Irish and German songs and 
Beethoven's sonatas. English folk-songs and 
adaptations from operas we divided. Wagner's 
music was then wandering to U3 in fragments ; 
which grew more meaningful when Mr. J. R. G. 
Hassard filled the old New York Tribune with 
analyses of the first Bayreuth **Ring of the 
Nibelungs." 

Evenings, too, and on Sunday afternoons. 
Pater would now and then read aloud — I recall 
times he chose the Book of Job ; certain Psalms ; 
Hamlet; Pope's ** Essay on Man"; Bums' ** Cot- 
ter's Saturday Night" and **Tam 0' Shan- 
ter;" poems of Thomas Hood about Dame 
Eleanor Spearing's trumpet, **The Elm Tree," 
*'Miss Killmansegg and her Precious Leg"; 
and stories from Irving. 

Along with m.y Father's view of life, and love 
for the fundamentals of life, lay unswerving 
devotion to truth and loathing of pretence and 



30 LIFE ON A TABM 

shams. This, with him, included an abhorrence 
of the intellectual dishonesty which twists and 
distorts words from their commonly accepted 
meaning, and cloaks itself in phrases that cant 
or conceal their real significance. 

In those times, almost fifty years ago, every 
day saw publication of age long hypotheses upon 
our world's evolution. Now, at first blush, 
those hypotheses seemed to war with the preva- 
lent theology. Therefore their popularization 
met many an anathema from short-sighted or 
fear-stricken ecclesiasts; who rose as a man to 
the defense of Pliny. 

Theories of evolution went on winning, how- 
ever. They appealed to those seeking enduring 
foundations, and not endeavoring to square their 
reasoning to some evanescent dogma* They 
appealed to thinkers in fundamental truths who 
were sure to create the spiritual atmosphere of 
heirs of the anathematize rs — ^heirs who have now 
come to realize that the h3rpotheses endow our 
earth, and all it carries, and has carried, with a 
divinity beyond the vision of any arrogance; 
spiritual heirs whom I (so great changes may 
one life witness !) lately heard preaching from a 
pulpit of old Trinity, New York, on Hebrews, 
xiii, 2, **Be not forgetful to entertain strangers; 
for thereby some have entertained angels un- 



NEAK LAUKEL TOWN 31 

awaies;" '^angels," the sermon explained, being 
current theories of evolution and ** Darwinism." 
In all the then ferment and stir, calm thinking 
ruled at our house — to those standing firm on 
truth, first ** angels,'' and ultimately all peoples 
come. Of the Eternal Power 

"Which wields the world with never-wearied love, 
Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above." 

we spoke not readily. But the mighty works 
of that Power we watched with unceasing awe 
and interest. Darwin's books, and Huxley's, 
and Tyndall's, found ready readers with us ; no 
where more interested discussers. We brought 
the teachings into various, although necessarily 
minor, relations. For instance. Pater now and 
then called our attention to coloration in plants 
and animals, and constantly taught us to reason 
towards causes from effects. 

One occurence, but I hasten to add exceedingly 
minor, rises to memory at this moment: — A 
September morning, the sun burning through a 
light, veiling fog, as he and I were driving I 
exclaimed, *^I smell tuberoses in the wind." 

^^Let us keep to the scent till we find them," 
he answered. 

At last we came upon a field of 

"The sweetest flower for scent that blows." 



32 LIFE ON A FAKM 

**A field of tuberoses !'' I cried, amazed at the 
exotic opulence of the acres. It seemed as if 
an aromatic plain or fragrant garden of Lallah 
Rookh unfolded before us; or better still the 
Feast of Roses at Cashmere. 

* * To sell," the owner answered with occidental 
practicality, telling how he raised bulbs to 
market in colder latitudes. 

Another day I found a dried field-mouse on 
the thorn of an osage-orange hedge, and we 
studied how a butcher-bird had probably caught 
the little pilferer and impaled it against his 
needs. 

Many were such learnings. 



IV 

Men who kept our farm in order came mainly 
from the north of Europe. Their bodies, stunted 
and brawny, testified how generations of fore- 
bears had labored unceasingly and suffered lack 
of food ; calling to your mind vegetation in Ari- 
zona — you saw they had grown to strange forms 
just as (^cti do eking out a living in hostile en- 
vironment. Even their faces were muscular, and 
often looked as if carved from gutta percha, or 
mahogany. 



NEAE LAUREL TOWl^ 33 

Of all the best was Nielson, a nutty little 
native of the fiord land — silent, ably executive, 
whose countenance now and then relaxed, when 
a smile would push through wrinkles about the 
eyes, trickle down his cheeks till it settled about 
the mouth ; and the smile's me aningf nines s made 
up for the face's prevalent apathy. 

Nielsen had a singular power. He loved ani- 
mals with an intensity I have never seen in any 
other human. Wooden and stolid towards the 
world at large, with a sort of ashamed suppres- 
sion of self, this doubtless, also, a result of cen- 
turies of oppression — a status you could not call 
stoic calm, for stoic calm connotes intellectual 
refinement — ^he would, when he thought no one 
saw him, hug a horse, lay his head alongside a 
cow's neck, and squeeze a satin-bound pigling till 
it squealed. Or, his strange power may have 
come from his music. From a mere mouth-organ 
I never heard its equal. 

Often of bright Sunday mornings — ^like those 
a Nova Scotia nurse used to describe in her 
poetic Scotch accent as ** God's own glory is in 
the air this morning" — often of a Sunday morn- 
ing, he would go off to the north meadow with 
this Pan-pipe of his, and draw forth melodies of 
his native land and others picked up here, walk- 
ing about among the animals. Having gained 



34 LIFE ON A FAEM 

their attention, or perhaps made them aware of 
his comradeship, he would set off marching in 
military gait np and down the sward. 

His intimates would fall in line behind him, 
and he would seemingly swerve them where he 
chose. He would circle a high-set windmill tire- 
lessly pumping sweet water for their drinking 
troughs. They would follow. He would go round 
an old oak, haunt of red-winged blackbirds, then 
down through the ravine. They after him. 

First in line came Higgles, a well-bred filly 
with ways as graceful and coaxing as a kitten's 
— for whenever you went into her close, she 
would hasten to you with a bowing motion of 
her head, and walk about with you, her nose-tip 
on your shoulder. If you were to explain her by 
human reasoning, you would say it was an odd, 
quizzical pose of hers, that nose-tip on the 
shoulder business, springing from confidence in 
and warmheartedness towards you. Equinely, 
also, it may have been that. When she was at it, 
she seemed to be pouring loving gossip in your 
ear, even if she spoke none other than the lan- 
guage of the Houyhnhnms. 

Trailing in line after Higgles came Dick. Then 
Nick the roadster, and Betsy Bobbit, a nervous 
little creature with a vindictive eye and anarchis- 
tic notions in her small head. Then Fanny Fire- 



NEAE LAUKEL TOWN 3 



tJU 



fly, as fine a buckskin mare as ever laid "back ears 
and hastened her gait if she heard a wagon 
ahead of her. Then other horses, four or five of 
them. 

Next came the mules. Poor, patient beasts ! 
For some reason they never associated with 
the horses. Somehow social lines were as clearly 
drawn in their meadow as in the bigger world of 
men. You never saw a simple-minded, melan- 
choly-faced mule hobnobbing with a sleek, blue- 
blooded horse. The two of them, mule and horse, 
fed in different patches, and seemingly endured 
each other's company — just as humans do when 
conventions enslave them. 

After the mules the cows dragged their slow 
feet. Shorthorns mainly; but a couple of 
Jerseys and a native or two had crept in. Be- 
tween these thorough-breds and plain-rangers, 
however, lurked no smug airs of upper and 
lower, no snobbery. Together they grazed and 
ruminated. Together they sought the watering 
troughs in the noontide heat. Together they 
huddled when the wind suddenly veered and a 
fierce norther struck down from the upper airs. 
And now they marched in mixed file to Nielson's 
music, yet so far along the line that their ears 
must have been very sensitive to catch the melo- 
dies' beat. 



36 LIFE ON A FARM 

Oddest of all, perhaps, were the sheep. 
Whether they have a sense of rhythm I do not 
know. Yet they, too, sometimes fell in with the 
parade. Perhaps, in a silly, mutton-headed way 
they wanted to do as the bigger folk of the 
meadow did. At any rate they ambled along in 
Nielson's trail, heads down, as if in reflective 
mood, and tails sometimes wagging like mad. 

But Miggles was always at the head, and fol- 
lowing close after Nielson, the conjurer — ^he 
blowing through his pipes of Pan like a west 
wind through a harp, and swinging his legs just 
as later I saw soldaten, new at the goose-step, 
swing theirs on the Truppen TJehungs Platz 
near Berlin. 

How, one again wonders, could Nielson have 
gained this power of leadership? Through his 
fondling each particular friend? Or, in this 
marvellous world of ours, and its mysterious 
life, did these people of the meadow recognize in 
him some sib, some creature akin, which our 
more evolved senses were too dull to perceive; 
and did they honor relationship they felt by fi- 
delity to his will? 

No one can tell. But so ran history upon the 
bottom-land of our farm hard by Laurel Town, 
when cardinals whistled '^What cheer?'' in Feb- 
ruary ; and, too, when summer cuckoos cried over 



NEAK LAUKEL TOWN 37 

sunlit blue grass and timothy. Under Kansas 
skies a minor re-acting of that wonder-worker of 
Greece, whose legend has brightened all cen- 
turies since the hour, when 

"Orpheus with his lute made trees, 
And the mountain tops that freeze, 
Bow themselves, when he did sing." 

One September the farm and all its dependent 
people I was in charge of. I felt the responsi- 
bility unceasingly, and, up and about early of 
mornings, one day I stood studying the egotism 
of a peacock as he danced before his mate, in 
and out a row of hemlocks on the uplands by the 
house. His splendid attire, his strut and vanity 
and topping rhythm called to mind certain be- 
wigged, belaced, velvet-coated, silk-stockinged 
ancestors I had read of — his wings sweeping at 
and beating the ground serving for sword- 
clank — 

When an old Sante Fe cattle-train came grind- 
ing down the track. The train roared with ex- 
haustion, for she had made hundreds of miles 
with least possible overhauling, aiming for Kan- 
sas City stock yards and rest. 

Through the early air, above the creak and 
rumble of worn iron, the engine screeched 
primeval A. Cottonwood leaves, and willow, 



38 LIFE ON A TAEM 

down by the spring, quivered at the ear-splitting 
note; and limestone ridges, lying west, barked 
back A — A — A over dew-drenched grasses. 

For some reason of the moment I turned from 
the peacock to watch the train through the morn- 
ing's horizontal shafts of sunlight, the yellow 
clarity of the early fall. 

Suddenly a door of one of the cars slid along 
its groove. In the opening bristled horns. Bodies 
bearing the horns came in sight — bodies leaping 
and landing on the railway embankment. 

The train rolled on towards Laurel Town just 
round the curve. 

Texas steers! — stunned by a leap; but free. 
There they stood, a bit shaky in leg, and as if 
endeavoring to sense their freedom. Then, 
seemingly mastering the fact, up went horns 
and heads and out went tails. Bellowing they 
started for the river over a stretch of corn stub- 
ble ; and on to where the waters of the Kaw shot 
their light through the timber. 

Others had seen the roisterers — three farm- 
men not far from where I was standing, and 
they, too, shared my alarm. Nielson, gifted with 
brains and best of workers; John shy as a 
weasel, good at his work but sulky with the sour, 
wordless sulkiness I have seen in landmen from 
Scandinavia ; and Ole, whose thick blood hatched 



NEAK LAUKEIi TOWN" 39 

megrims, which megrims hatched mental dis- 
tortions, which distortions hatched lies and love 
of shirking. 

All four of us, I say, eyed the raiders. Out on 
the plains from where those fellows came ^* Tex- 
as fever'^ had been raging, and cattle dying 
by thousands. 

The imported Shorthorns down in their yard 
below I grew anxious for. How happy and 
peaceful they looked ! — nosing golden pumpkin, 
crunching red-corn breakfasts, holding their 
heads on a line with their bodies as they 
munched and lifted up their eyes in gustatory 
satisfaction, their heavy tongues now and then 
lapping drooling lips. What a picture of con- 
tentment ! 

Texas steers might do for these Shorthorns 
what a boy does when he carries scarlet fever, 
or other infection, to his school. 

Plainly enough the Texans were bent on bat- 
tle. They had suffered horribly, doubtless, shut, 
cramped, stifled in that terrible prison, an old- 
fashioned cattle-car. They ached for motion, 
for light, air, water, food. Ceaseless roar, jar 
and jostle, had disordered their whole being. 

There they stood in the distance, soaking their 
dry hoofs in the river's edge. How long would 
they keep at it? 



40 LIFE ON A FAEM 

But even now they were turning about, blow- 
ing the air from their lungs and coming up to 
recross the railway. A field of clover lay before 
them. *^ Hungry, probably" we mused. **They 
will pasture'\ 

The marauders were far hungrier for mo- 
tion, for equalizing action, for stretching their 
legs. Energy prompted their every step. The 
first fence they reached they stuck their heads 
through and sent its wires flying as if they were 
tow twine. 

Next the clover field lay a ravine, flooded 
when the river rose high ; at other times empty 
save for rabbits and chipmunks at housekeep- 
ing, and coveys of quail and prairie-chicken hid- 
ing in its matted grass. 

Through this gully the Texans charged and up 
its hither bank, their horns set for battle. Even 
at our distance we seemed to see their muscles 
twitching and nostrils dilated. Four hundred 
feet more and they might stand at the cattle- 
yard, their horns possibly ripping off its pal- 
ings. 

** Oughtn't we to shoot the raiders?" asked 
one of the men. 

*'A pity if we had to!" 

**Some train-men must have seen them open 
the car-door", suggested another, **and now the 



NEAB LAUEELi TOWN 41 

freigWer has side-tracked at Laurel Town, 
they'll send cowboys to corral the lot/' 

*^ Meanwhile, will the Texans disseminate the 
fever f' 

Minutes seemed long as we reflected. 

**A man's mad", said Nielson, with his hesi- 
tating, wistful, old-world-soil-tiller's smile, *^a 
man's mad sometimes goes away when he's had 
a full meal. May be it's the same with Texas 
steers. Let's try and see". 

So the three seized corn knives, and ran to 
fodder stacks, and fell to work; cutting up 
sweet pumpkins, forking green stalks of com 
at the feet of the strangers before our cattle- 
yard gates. 

The rough steers paused and sniffed the fra- 
grant food. One daring fellow ran out his 
tongue and curled it back loaded with pumpkin. 
He was quite the runt of the lot; a blind hog 
finding the acorns. 

The steer liked the fruit. Another made the 
same venture. He wanted more. Another tried. 
Then another. Till, at last, by the end of, say, 
half an hour, when ponies carrying cow-punch- 
ers came racing up the main-traveled road, there 
down in the bottom stood a row of rugged-brown 
backs — Texas steers, crunching sweet, green 
corn-stalks and golden pumpkins. Seemingly no 



42 LIFE OIT A FABM 

steer in tlie world ever tasted anything so good. 
They could not hold from eating long enough 
to whip their tails at the busy flies of Sep- 
tember. 

Mild-eyed and conquered. Their feet they 
had softened with water. Aching throats they 
had wet. Empty paunches they had filled with 
luscious, emolient pulp. The terrors of their 
cattle-car, its crowded space, its racking noise, 
they had forgotten. They went off tamely at the 
crack of the cowboys' whip. 

From the Texans' raid no harm greater than a 
caging in the stone bam came to our Shorthorns, 
and loss of one day's sunshine on their round 
sides. 

V 

Not one American housewife, probably, but 
has longed for such golden girls as Homer sings, 
those rolling, likable lassies Hephaestus forged, 
according to accounts in the eighteenth book of 
*^The Illiad" — **good sense, and speech, and 
strength they had, and crafts they learned from 
the immortal gods.'' 

Just such maids we craved at the house my 
Mother conducted. Yet Hephaestus made us 
nothing of the sort. Instead we had manifold 



NEAR LAUREL. TOWN 43 

human factota wlio hardly ever seemed golden ; 
not infrequently, it is true, silvern ; and then at 
times substantially brazen. 

The aunties were most individual — negro wo- 
men, more or less dark, gifted with legends and 
faithfulness of mammies of the old days; in 
every instance bom and bred in slavery, the sole 
echo to us of whatever poetry, whatever love, 
devotion and human worth may have lain in 
that institution. Full of strength and truth in 
the great turns of life ; full of beautiful earnest- 
ness; trustworthy in large events, what unac- 
countable perversions they sometimes suffered 
in the small ! 

One ' * coff ee-and-cream", Spanish-eyed, little 
body and cheery soul often called to my mind 
Homer's epithet of Aethiopians, blameless. For 
downright dependability Mary was golden. But 
if verity were the point, between what happened 
and what she fancied you never could tell. 

One seventeenth day of March some one 
passed our windows wearing a sprig of green. 
Mother, seeing the shamrock, exclaimed, '^Mary, 
this is St. Patrick's day!'' 

'^Yes'm, I know", answered Mary, ready as 
any polyhistor, *^I was here when they buried 
him". 

**But Mary", said Mater with a smile — 



44i LIFE ON A FABM 

**01i, welP', broke in Mary hurriedly, ^'if it 
•wasn't him, it was one of his representatives". 
Then with introspective eyes and smiling mouth, 
as if in mental enjoyment of the past, she added 
her clincher, * ^ They had a great time''. 

Wish never to fail to rise to the occasion, and 
the tenacity of her conceptions came out again 
and again ; pose of the utterer of oracles is not 
confined to the learned alone. 

One evening, as I entered Mater's room to has- 
ten Mary's recreation hour, I pointed to the red 
and gold of the western sky saying, **What a 
wonderful sunset !" 

^^Yes'm", answered Mary, turning her eyes so 
the light fell into their liquid depths, * ^ The sun 
sets in the north to-night". Then with grave 
voice and solemn manner, ^'It's a sure sign of 
rain". 

^^Why, Mary", my inexperience answered, 
*Hhe sun always sets in the west." 

'^Well, I've noticed'^ rejoined Mary, with 
calmness and dignity, her brown-velvet hands 
slowly smoothing the tea-tray cover and pulling 
it even on all four sides, **I've noticed that 
before a storm the sun always sets in the north." 

To answer would contravene ex cathedra 
utterance. Like all dogmatists Mary thought 
that insisting on a thing made it true. 



NEAE LAUREL TOWN 45 

The dear old bully shuffled off toward the 
kitchen, from the distance coming her song : 

•'My soul is like a new tin pan, 
Lord, grease it with thy grace ; 
And rub, and rub, and rub, dear Lord, 
Till I can see thy face." 

A son-in-law, whom Mary proudly described 
as **professor on the banjo^', used to come to the 
kitchen-door days when her pay was due and ask 
her for her wages — this ne'er-do-well taught her 
words and melodies. 

Mary expressed other striking cosmological 
notions, stoutly asserting * * the moon's a woman, 
wife of the sun ; haven't you noticed how change- 
able she isf 

Which recalls, if we may wander so far, a 
fancy of another old-time slave. Wondering at 
the beauty of the world, and reasoning upon it 
with all the knowledge his poor life could mus- 
ter, he told me, with solemnity of countenance 
showing intellectual eifort back of it, that the 
stars were knot-holes and gimlet-holes in the 
floor of heaven, and their light the glory of 
paradise shining through. That their light is 
the glory of heaven shining through, none but 
an unimaginative scientist would deny. 

Bom to the purple of a house-slave near New 
Orleans, Mary practiced an unconscious snob- 



46 LIFE ON A FAEM 

bery — snobbery is commonly unconscious — and 
looked down on field-workers, such as Peter Vin- 
egar ; whose ear so loved a sonorous phrase that 
it led him to name his heir (the child did not 
long survive), Americus Disgustus Dapoleon 
Vinegar. 

Of all our aunties, most characterful, I think 
was Phyllis, plumb full of racy expressions, a 
natural narrator, and never tired telling her ex- 
periences, in slavery and out. Through it all, 
her eyes had been wide open, ears listening, 
judgment sane. I still see her serious, yellow- 
brown face, high shoulders covered with ging- 
ham of a generous old-time-plantation cut; and 
her brave hands freckled a deeper brown, in 
hours of rest placidly folded in her ample lap. 
Such speaking hands ! What work they had done 
for field, for house, for pickaninny ! She was not 
a clever, slender, golden girl of the Hephaestean 
type, but her face and figure might have served 
as model for a nineteenth century Moroni or 
Frans Hals. 

**Yes'm, I had sixteen children. My mother 
had only twelve. But my aunt had fifty-nine 
grandchildren, and eighty-five great grandchil- 
dren before she died''. Slavery believed in 
breeders. 

After their shackles had fallen, she and her 



NEAK LATJKEL TOWN 47 

husband had gone to that legendary country 
once called *Hhe Great American Desert". **Bnt 
dust and sand storms was so bad we feared the 
children would lose their way to school, and in 
winter snow druv so heavy they couldn't go. 
Why, sometimes it was so cold that fat hogs 
froze half way down the back, and we had to kill 
and ship 'em on to a Kansas City soap factory. 

**We kept warm by burning cornstalks and 
hay — ^had burners large enough to burn a bale of 
hay, and three bales lasted one day. What was 
the burners made of? Sheet iron; and they cov- 
ered the stove and burnt underneath. "We cooked 
in the oven. Why, we ran mills two years by 
burning hay, had two men feeding all the time. 
For summer fires we used to go to the com fields 
and pick up a load of stalks. 

*'One thirtieth of April oats was in and up, 
when a hail-storm came and poisoned the ground 
— packed it so nothin' didn't grow that year. 
The storm killed chickens, too, and sucking 
pigs ; and my son-in-law went out to Cheyenne 
bottom and gathered a wagon-load of dead sea- 
gulls and all kinds of birds ; sea-gulls come be- 
fore a storm and rise down and rise up and fly 
graceful-like''. 

Full of the traditions and beautiful lore of 
folk who have lived in and by the field, * * 'Taint 



48 LIFE ON A FAKM 

no use denyin' ", she one day declared, * * that 
chicken-weed grows where chickens is, or have 
been. And yon always find mullein where sheep 
feed ; and iron weed springs up in a horse-pas- 
ture. It^s as true as day'\ 

Aunt Phyllis sang many a melody in the vel- 
vet accent of her race — songs she had caught up 
in youth when one warehouse stood where Kan- 
sas City now stands, and ** wasn't nobody in 
western Missouri but Mormons and Indians". 
The humor of her songs forecast that of present- 
day vaudeville. One, possibly referring to the 
company of a packet plying between St. Louis 
and Westport, Aunt Phyllis usually prefaced by 
proclaiming : ' ^ There's more married now than's 
getting along well" ; 

"Four score and ten a verse, 
Not a penny in a purse, 
Something must be done for ub. 
Poor old maids! 

We're all of the Desman crew, 
Dressed in yellow, pink and blue. 
Nursing cats is all we do, 
Poor old maids! 

To the devil we do go, 
The bachelors will be there, too. 
Each of us will have a beau, 
Poor old maids!" 



NEAK LAUREL TOWN 49 

Another Westport song of Aunt Phyllis^s ex- 
horted to temperance ; 

"I went down street the other night, 

And there by the corner there lie an old friend; 

I spoke to him, but 't wa' n't no use, 

For he knew no more of me than a goose. 

So, come and jine our cold-water band. 

Come and jine our cold-water band, 

And we'll unite hand in hand." 



Still another referred to political divisions : 

"The moon was shinin' silver-bright, 
The stars with glory crowned the night. 
High on that limb that same old coon 
Was singin' to hisself this tune; 

Get out the way, you're all unlucky, 
Clear the track for old Kentucky; 
Fiery, southern, brave Calhoun, 
Who beats the fox, and fears the coon; 
Let that track be dry or mucky, 
We'll clear the track for old Kentucky; 
Get out the way, you're all unlucky, 
Clear the track for old Kentucky." 

Then Aunt Phyllis had other verses worthy 
of a Mother Goose anthology: 

"De raccoon hab a ringy tail, 
De possum's tail is bare; 
De rabbit hab no tail at all. 
But a little bit o' bunch o' hair." 



50 LIFE ON A FARM 

"De possum and de raccoon 
Went up de tree a-fightin'; 
De turkey-hen she scratch so hard 
De gobbler died a laughin'." 

"Possum up a gum stump. 
Raccoon in de hollow ; 
Pretty gal at Dinah's house 
Fat as she can wallow. 
Possum shank a'roastin', 
Wid de marow in de bone; 
Pretty gal at Dinah's house — 
And Dinah ain't to home." 

"Dey tie my feet, and tie my hand, 
And dey lay me down upon de sand; 
De skeeters come and eat my clothes, 
And bite my ears and tickle my nose; 
Dey leab me dar till I weep and moan, 
And swear I'll let dem pullets alone." 



VT 

Answering a message that our Mother 
would welcome a strong, trustworthy woman for 
cleaning — Mater tabooed the word servant be- 
cause of its old associations and the hostilities 
the word engenders — answering this call for a 
household orderly, sent to a tenement where 
folks from Sweden met, there appeared as odd a 
compound as you would be apt to find in all the 
human lees Europe has cast through Castle Gar- 
den or Ellis Island; Mary Peterson, stunted in 



NEAR LAUREL. TOWN 51 

statnre, a trifle bent in shoulders, as thirty-six- 
years-old workers we Americans import are apt 
to be, but having a skin texnred and colored like 
a blush rose, hair as fine as floss-silk and of the 
dye of gold, eyes small, deep-set, a tip-tilted 
nose and a protruding chin; such countenance 
as legend has given witches and other psychically 
abnormal creatures. 

A strange and picturesque vision ! Yet, in the 
analysis of practical, Kansas sunlight, winning ; 
perhaps by a broad kindliness, even if somewhat 
of the elf, somewhat of the fool, somewhat of the 
seeress shone in the face. 

Mother engaged her at once. Smiling she 
turned and trudged off to town for her clothes, 
later setting forth these riches — ^underwear of 
the thickest linen we had ever seen, heavy, wool- 
en stockings, skirts woven of wool wadded in so 
firmly that it made the cloth clumsy and stiff. 

But under those terrible wearables such a will- 
ing heart ! Mater held her back a day or two till 
she had clad her in light cottons fitting our 
climate, and then the new recruit fell to her 
adept's scouring and cleaning. Learning our 
language after her own methods, she would 
point to some object and ask, **Disf ' And when 
one answered, for instance, ** tongs", or ** table", 
she would go on with her work, repeating to 



52 LIFE ON A FABM 

herself * Hongs/, ** table'', till she had driven a 
furrow through her brain and planted the word 
in it. 

To distinguish her from a household-helper 
already established, she must have another name 
than Mary. ** Venus'', we children wickedly in- 
sisted. But when Mater explained the difficulty 
of having two Marys in one house, and asked the 
new comer's wishes, suggesting Peterkin, or 
Peter, for her special ownership, she delightedly 
•said either would be right ; and Peter and Peter- 
kin she was through all remaining time. 

Eighteen years, off and on, she stayed with 
us. Truth compels **off and on". She had an ad- 
venturous head, possibly you might say she had 
intellectual curiosity working behind the weird, 
elfin light that shone in her eyes. Eecurrently, 
after a year or two of domestic ease and rou- 
tine a wanderlust would seize her and she must 
off to some town whose name had struck her 
fancy. A few months never failed to bring her 
repentant to the door, begging to be taken back, 
averring **no place so good as dis". 

Among the Swedes who came over about her 
time, she soon got a reputation for riches. What 
her thrift saved, and it was much of her earn- 
ings, she turned into twenty dollar gold pieces ; 
which she hastened to lay in crevices of her bed- 



NEAB lAUBEL TOWN 53 

stead. This method of banking seemed so facile 
and clever that she confided her device to the 
cook, whom the hand of the Lord has stained 
ebon. Then, a few days after, she cried out that 
she had lost an eagle. A wave of war rolled one 
minute from the kitchen. 

When Mater heard of the safe-deposit, and of 
the confidences, she told Peterkin she must lock 
up her treasures and herself keep the key. So 
Peter bought a trunk pasted over with yellow- 
brown paper and rimmed with sheet iron. But 
it had the dignity and individuality of a lock, 
and delighted her simple soul beyond telling. 

Still, riches engender sorrow. No surcease 
has ever come to that law; older even than the 
days of Solomon. Nor did it fail now in Peter^s 
experience. Her savings, not her many virtues, 
brought suitors. Stolid owedes, whom she met 
at her country-people^s houses, where on Sun- 
days she sought social refreshment — gruff, 
silent, sour-visaged fellows they looked as they 
shuffled towards our house, came courting. 

In their first visit, say on a rainy Sunday 
afternoon, they evinced their interest and con- 
fidence in her, Peter afterwards told us, by 
subtly suggesting that her years warranted a 
home of her own. What female of the human 
species could withstand such a hint! At their 



54 LIFE ON A FARM 

second coining, say a short call in a week-day 
afternoon, they broached the subject of mar- 
riage. On the third they completed their pro- 
posal, and asked the loan of a gold-piece, or two. 

Peterkin^s weird eyes could not see the mean- 
ing of it, and through several years vari-colored 
jscoundrels played with her earnings; not to 
speak of her affections. 

At last appeared the slickest of them all — 
more refined than the others in looks, with bet- 
ter clothing, better shoe-leather, longish hair 
and a weary, sickly, dissatisfied face. **Bottin- 
son'* paid his sweetheart many visits, and 
wheedled her out of several hundred dollars be- 
fore he went away and never came back. 

Bottinson had finesse. With his fading into 
the unexplorable ended Peter's faith and trust 
in legal tenders for men. They had hurt her 
terribly. But she was game, poor, brave soul I 
— ^^and when speaking to those who had known 
her history, and theirs, she was never quite done 
joking over their lies, and how slily they had 
mulcted her purse. 

Yet, Bottinson's desertion was nothing to 
what another day brought. A norther blew 
bleakly, fine-pelleted snow fell, but Peter flung 
herself upon a wood-pile and lay on its rough 
edges far into the dark, refusing all body- 



NEAE LAUEEL TOWN 55 

nourishment and soul-comfort, conscious only 
of despair. 

Back in Sweden she had left a father, sister 
and brother living together in the little cottage 
they owned. Possibly all the family were 
afiQicted with Peterkin^s mental queemesses. 
At any rate that winter-day in Kansas, letters 
and papers came telling how her sister had one 
night made milk-porridge for father and 
brother, and in the porridge had boiled matches. 
The two men, tired and hungry from work in 
excessive frosts, ate a hearty supper. Both 
died before morning. 

Their bodies were laid in such graves as the 
country-folk in Sweden prepare during summer 
for possible needs when frosts harden the 
ground. The sister dwelt alone. Yet not alone. 
The conscience of her soul awoke. Her father 
stood before her and told her of her sin. She 
could not withstand the accusing spirit. In a 
fortnight she set out for town to make known 
how she had coveted ownership so far as to kill 
her men-folks to whom the law gave the little 
house and land. A judge took testimony re- 
ferring to the strength of her mind, and finally 
confined her for life in the city, confiscating her 
freehold to the crown. 

Out in a Kansas blizzard the old story of 



56 LIFE ON A FARM 

crime not striking the criminal alone was enact- 
ing. Innocent Peterkin, thousands of miles 
from the tragedy, sat in the numbing cold, 
wringing her hands and now and then uttering 
cries like a wounded animars, paralyzed by grief 
and shame. Her father and brother deadl — 
and dead in a way that blood of hers befouled 
itself! 

In her agony dreams of paying a visit to 
Sweden and carrying help to the old home van- 
ished. Ever after Sweden was to her a for- 
bidden name, and forbidden land. American 
she wanted to become; in many ways did 
become. Even the white light of her birthland 
faded from her face ; in course of years her skin 
tanned to a brown, and the exquisite gold of her 
hair turned to ash shades. 

Peterkin had characteristics we Americans 
admire in the land-folks of northern Europe. 
She had simple, direct honesty. She had self- 
retraint. Considerations of others' rights and 
needs had socialized her. She was conscious 
of, and felt pride in maintaining her self-re- 
liance ; pride, also, in doing her work finely and 
with great cleanliness. Consequently she had 
severity of bearing — any human may easily be 
good-natured if he has nothing to do but be 
good-natured ; if he has no ideal to serve. Hon- 



NEAE LAUREL TOWN 57 

esty, self-reliance, cleanliness and even severity 
— ^all were in keeping with her simple, cool, ra- 
tionally tinctured religious phases. 

Perhaps ancestral-seeress proclivities got hold 
of her after we left Laurel Town. At any rate 
she passed to the emotionalism of the Salvation 
Army. Her zeal to labor for her new friend 
led to her hawking about the War Cry, Or 
perhaps the Army set her the task, recognizing 
the quaintness of her face and figure and her 
ready tongue. 

A favorite song of hers in her unregenerate 
days she would begin with 

"Shoo, fly! 
Bod-der me!" 

This now gave way to another evolved in the 
enthusiasm of the barracks, leastwise a favorite 
at that time; 

•'There are no flies on you ; 
There are no flies on me ; 
There are no flies — " 

the song went on, citing the Religious Example ; 
triumphantly concluding with, 

"So far as we can see." 

Begging she learned to benefit others. The 
habit remained when her fervor for the Army 
cooled. At last we heard that she was meeting 



58 LIFE ON A FAUM 

people of a monring with * * Gi^e a penny V^ As- 
tonishing! — and yet one vagary of a life of 
mental wanderings. 

Society and Peterkin were now at variance. 
Indeed society had never understood Peter. 
Doubtless society did not understand those old 
seeresses who were her ancestors. But society 
did not longer uphold Peter. Nor did Peter 
uphold society. The lonely, old soul knew she 
was down and out. But she kept a room for 
herself, to which she took wood she gathered, 
and garments given in charity ; till, finally, under 
an August sun she fell unconscious in an alley. 

A singular compound! Faithful as a dog, 
and yet at times treacherous; perhaps the 
treachery developed when her mental weak- 
nesses recurred. Keenly honest in her dealings, 
and repeatedly the dupe of thieves and their 
absurd pretences. Proud of herself and her 
good name, yet at last a daily beggar. Kindly, 
quaint, independent, joying in life with a very 
genuine joy. A child of old northmen, and, 
still more clearly, old ^orthwomen, 

VII 

Those I have here bespoken the amplitude of 
our farm next Laurel Town embraced. Natu- 



NEAB LAUREL TOWN 59 

rally we had neighbors not of the farm, the 
greater number known as ** mud-floor Missou- 
rians," natives of the richly gifted state to the 
east, who retained such liking for their old 
habits that, report said, no matter how roomy 
the house their affluence had come to afford, they 
loved best to live so that their bare feet might 
press the maternal soil. 

Such tales seemed to us very curious. Also 
doubtful. Experience confirmed the truth of 
at least one. 

I dropped a rain-coat from the phaeton, and 
having heard that the family of a large brick 
house hard by had picked it up, I went to their 
front door and rang the bell. In vain. But I 
so wanted to get back my coat that I walked 
toward the rear of the house seeking another en- 
trance. A pair of dogs sallied from the elms' 
shade. Their bark brought to a cellar door 
the tall, bare-footed, Indian-featured mistress 
of the manse. Behind her opened a large 
room, seemingly serving as kitchen and living- 
room, all comfortably floored with Mother 
Earth. 

When I told my errand, the dame handed me 
the coat, accepted my thanks with a nod of the 
head, and said, **We knew the cloak was you- 
alP'S 'cause nobody hyerabouts has one like it. 



60 LIFE ON A FAEM 

But we thought we'd keep it till you-all come for 
it." 

Missourians living* in Kansas still retained 
no little of the hatred they inherited from days* 
when Kansas was the storm centre of national 
politics, and her history a fore-scene of the Civil 
War. They held themselves far from associa- 
tion with what their ginger speech called **the 
damned Yankees." 

From their point of view, seemingly, those 
bom in Missouri reached on birth the summit 
of earthly excellence and glory. The same sort 
of self-gratulation I have since heard in others 
— for instance, among people bom in Boston, or 
its neighbor Cambridge. To live in a place con- 
secrated by noble deeds is a great thing. But 
somehow our human minds can not help asking 
if such deeds should not quicken to like perform- 
ance, not to self-complacent vaunting, passivity 
of the closed mind and folded hand, silly critic- 
ism of, or weak hostilities towards those bom, 

*"It is evident that the time to try men's soul's has now 
come in Kansas. The villains who have gone there from 
Missouri, with clubs, bowie-knives and revolvers, to over- 
ride the genuine settlers, and establish slavery at whatever 
cost, must now be met determindly." Herald of Freedom, 
Lawrence, Wednesday, June 9, 1855. 

"No week has ever passed without . . . insult and con- 
tumely thrown at our people by our nearest neighbors, the 
Missourians," wrote the author of *'Six Months in Kansas," 
in November, 1855. 



NEAE LAUREL TOWN 61 

or living, elsewhere. After all, througli the cen- 
turies human nature has changed little — ^assump- 
tion of superiority, even of moral superiority, 
based on place of birth did not die out of the 
world when dwellers of cities famed and opulent 
aligned against people from a little town called 
Nazareth. 

Another of our neighbors stood as far as the 
east from the west from the Missouri exclusives. 

*'With a porch at his door both for shelter and shade too, 

As the sunshine or rain may prevail; 
And a small spot of ground for the use of the spade too, 

With a barn for the use of the flail," 

Dr. Hartmann, a German physician educated in 
Austria, now a trifle weary of a busy world, 
sought retirement. 

Traditions of gay Vienna, however, its 
** dolled-up" women, its wine, its song, spectred 
his life, and when handsome girls came visiting 
us, the Doctor would sometimes invite us to an 
afternoon hour at his house. 

Smiling, evidently gratified at our coming, 
he would welcome us at the front of his vine- 
covered porch. 

As for us, we were like a flock of wrens, or 
blue-birds, chattering about the flowers, trees 
and what-not till we found Kladderadatsch, 
Fliegende Blatter and other illustrated German 



62 LIFE ON A FAItM 

papers lying on tables of the veranda. Then, 
before we were fairly settled, the housekeeper 
would appear bringing German huchen heaped 
on a plate, and German linen napkins about a 
yard square that we would half unfold and make 
do for plate and serviette. 

At this juncture the Doctor, delighting in his 
hostship, would set forth a bottle of wine, wine 
he himsedf. had made fromi his own grapes:. 
There was the vineyard, he would point it out, 
not far from the porch. Of a beautiful claret 
color and sour, the wine saved little of the 
grapes' aroma; yet it was the real Bacchic in- 
heritance, the way our ancestors, through thou- 
sands of years, kept fruit-acids for their winter 
health. 

The Doctor, reaching a bottle towards our 
glasses, would meet our protest, ** Just a spoon- 
ful. Doctor, to taste your vintage ; you know we 
don't drink wine," and some teasing tale we had 
at hand, say a primitive legend from **A1- 
Mustatraf f 

**In the first days of the world, after Adam 
had planted the grapevine, Iblis (Satan, that is, 
may he be cursed!) sacrificed over it a peacock. 

**And the vine absorbed its blood. 

**Soon the leaves opened out, when Iblis, ever 
busy, offered up a monkey. 



NEAR LAUEEL TOWN 63 

*'The vine drank the blood. 

** Later when the plant put forth its clusters, 
the Evil One led to it a lion for oblation. 

**And the vine took up its blood. 

**Then, at last, after the clusters ripened, 
Iblis drew near a swine and made sacrifice. 

**The swine's blood the vine also drank. 

* * So now it is that he who drinketh of wine is 
first thrilled with the proud walk and parade of 
the peacock. Then, after a little, he becomes as 
gay and playful as a monkey. Later on the 
strength of the wine mounting, he grows wild 
and fierce, even as the form of a lion. And 
finally overcome, he falls and wallows in the 
mire as swine do, and sleeps unknowing mock- 
ery and derision." 

^*A very bad story!" the Doctor would assure 
us, and fall to regaling us with tales of European 
wine-presses, and of the great health and long 
life of drinkers of bottled-sunshine ; after a time 
seizing a decanter. 

^^ISTo, no, thank you, Doctor, no more, no 
more. You must send speciments of your wine 
to your old home and win fame for it." 

'^Now, my dear young lady," the Doctor 
would answer, still smiling and turning his head 
shghtly on one side, gradually tipping the 
bottle; **Vy not? Ein man does not valk on 



64' LIFE Oisr A FARM 

vun leg. Does he now?" — fastening us with his 

eye, but all the while pouring wine in our various 

glasses. **Tell me, does ein man valk on vun 

leg? You say you vill valk home. Veil, no vun 

can valk on vun glass vine ; immer zwei. Und 

noch eins, a cane you know." And by that time 

he would have brimmed our cups. 

The real German Gemuthlichkeit, you see. Its 

impressive Allgemeinheit drove me one day even 

to by-singing the great Goethe : 

Kennst du das Land? — ico die Lebhuchen "bliih^n, 
Mit dunklem Bier die kiihlen Steine gliih'n, 
Ein sanfter Wind vom griinen Garten weht, 
Pfannkuchen riecJit, und hoch Wurst-suppe stehtf 
Kennst du das Land? 

The Doctor, a bachelor many years, later on 
married a tiny, sweet-faced German widow. 
From the beginning she looked thoroughly sub- 
dued — recalling to my mind a sentiment about 
his wife from the Memoirs of an old New Eng- 
land preacher, somewhat known about Boston 
for his bullyragging ; * * She was a woman of in- 
comparable medkness, towards myselfe espe- 
cially.*' 

The Doctor married. Yea; but his bachelor 
habits of issuing sultanic orders persisted ; and 
the sequent life of himself and the winsome, wee 
lady did not brim with joy. At last the wife 



NEAB LAUREL TOWN 65 

left their domicile ; and she, and the Doctor also, 
sought lawyers and begged for divorce proceed- 
ings. 

Making ready to go before the court, their 
legal men one morning found a meeting neces- 
sary, and each by chance had his client with him. 
The lady and her husband were therefore in ad- 
joining rooms. Each knew the other's nearness. 

A clerk passing from one room to the other 
carelessly left the door open. Defendant and 
plaintiff sat facing each other. 

Moved by the sad figure opposite — ^wondering 
perhaps who had carried in his coifee and rolls 
that morning — the little plaintiff, her love again 
aflame, sprang from her chair crying; Mein 
Mann! Mein Mann! and flying with outstretched 
arms towards the doorway. 

Meine Frau! Meine Frau! returned the de- 
fendant, his heart full of a sentiment he could 
not uproot, and rushing through the entrance to 
the second room. 

Their impact told the lawyers that the case 
of Hartmann vs. Hartmann must forthwith be 
taken from the docket. Nothing remained for 
the legal men but to felicitate the couple upon 
the settlement of their grievances, and wish 
their household unbroken happiness for all the 
years to come. 



CEETAIN WHO DWELT IN 
LAUREL TOWN 



THE LITTLE CITY OF THE GHOSTLY HEART 

A little city, a meet human nest, 
Lies snug on teeming lands of Central West; 
Its houses, broadly parked with neighbors', stand 
Mid shruh and blossom, in a friendly band; 
And midst bird-haunted maples, trees so tall 
They seem like rows of pillars, or a wall 
To lift the wide and open, sparkling sky 
By winter's sun-dogs, or July's red eye. 

Such to a stranger's sense this city seems; 

And so to youthful students, when toith dreams 

And hopes of gaining fruits of ages long — 

A self-reliant, heart-high, eager throng — 

They swarm in dwelling, lecture-room, and street. 

And seize to-day, yet would to-morrow greet. 

Democracy triumphant! For the state 

Set on this city's height learning elate, 

lis university — its trained, strong arm 

Stretched forth to succor, brain and heart to warm. 

Exalt the people's life and make for right 

Through all just works, and days of lucent light. 

So does the little town in beauty rest; 

A fellowship building an ideal best; 

A gem on the telluric cloak of God; 

A wind-flower rising from its blue-grass sod. 

But ever in this city's ways and shade 
There moves another band. 

All unafraid 
From moss-soft mounds under broad oaks they come — 
Where blue-bird, thrush and squirrel make their home-^ 
And through the busy town they wander far, 
These souls without the grosser body's wear; 
And pass on restless, driven by the fire 
That burns m spirits who for others aspire, 

68 



For their young manhood lay in that far day 

When folk **went wesV* to work, and fight, and pray; 

When men embodied ancient English zeal 

For each man's right — the Puritan commonweal; 

The Puritan intensity of soul, 

Visions m,illennial, a new race to mould, 

These Anglo-Saxon state-makers then sought, 

And for their building their race-ideals brought. 

To blaze a way, to make a trail, to plough. 
To plant, to build a city — never Now 
But ever toward the Future urged their tvill; 
And ever toward the future look they still. 

O city of these future-yearning hearts! 

O leaf -clad town where youths^ years now do lie! 

Thou hast in keeping many mounds of earth. 

And only those who know not pass them, by; 

And misty beings ever go thy ways. 

And tell of years agone, and sing Ood^s praise. 

They gave themselves and stablished here their home — 
These ghostly men and loomen — and they come 
To watch right gain through fibre-strengthening strife; 
They are this city's very heart and life. 

First soldiers buoyantly ; then in between 
Their Colonel marches tcith a laughing mien; 
The Minister whose sermons counted far — 
But more his deeds among his people were; 
A Governor with teri'itorial tales 
Of how he downed age-old, pro-slavery wails; 
A Judge, whose violet eyes still shade with pain 
Eis sentence — lest it fail the offenders gain; 
The Secretary who served Lincoln when he died; 
The Naturalist, whose saurian was his pride; 
Professor "Rob** joking in Latin speech; 
And gentle he, **Lord'* D., who smiled on each; 

69 



HeartJi-huilders, too, with honor signs aloft — 
The trowel, straight-edge, plummet of their craft; 

These, and still other souls, inebriate 
Of labor and of planting seeds of state; 

And with them, constant wives in even pace. 
Their homesick tears wetting a smiling face. 

Boil-delvers, also, milkers of the kine. 
Planters of orchards and the fruitful vine; 
Their hair dishevelled, feet oftentimes splayed, 
Hands brown and horny, and their forms arrayed 
In dress ill-fit and faded — still they go 
With eyes reaping the future and aglow. 

As when June winds drive from the southern seas. 
And strike the wan primroses' fragile ease. 
And each small bloom dips to its mellow soil, 
Yet rises, ghost-like, after the gusfs toil; 
80 this white folk, this city*s heart and soul, 
Sway with a new day's zeal, a new timers toll. 
And yet pass ever singing old-times' joy and dole. 

"Had we not fought defeat, and woe and death, 
Our haunts would hardly house your calmer breath; 
To serve the truth, to see that justice guides. 
That all are free, that equity abides — 
Had we not fought for this with all our powers. 
You here could build no safer life than ours; 
To make our word incarnate in our deed. 
This was our offering, and our highest m^ed." 

Such are this city's heart. They realized 
Ideals for which the human spirit cried 
In swelling notes of Milton's sacred ^song; 
In Shelley's verse to right the whole world^s wrong; 
In Arnold's ringing cry pressing to call 
"Hail to the victors lying by the wall!" 

70 



'/So thoUf little tenon, thou purse of gold — 
BeyoTid the price of crtt thaVs hoiiffhf and sold-^ 
Thou haunt of ghostly lives firm, free and told; 
Thou dtoeUing, too, of lives bright, young, untold; 
Thou art a Land of Futures, place apart — 
A little city Of State-building Hearts. 



tt 



CERTAIN WHO DWELT IN LAUREL 

TOWN 



How the attractiveness of Laurel Town, its 
natural beauty, its people, the state's young uni- 
versity, led my Father to purchase land for a 
home adjoining the city, I have told in fore- 
going pages. 

It was not then a town of the soft, quiet 
beauty of nowadays, but more rugged, more 
individual, possibly closer to the heart of things. 
Suffering even to martyrdom before and during 
the Civil War had graved its face with startling 
emphasis ; it was a little city with its own physi- 
ognomy. 

North and south had sent together its people : 
southerners marked with strong personal senti- 
ment, an unvarying consciousness of self, and a 
social view that sometimes suggested the eight- 
eenth century we find in English books; the 

73 



74 CERTAIN WHO DWELT 

New England element, on the other hand, hav- 
ing its inevitable simplicity and directness. 
New England blood predominated, and espe- 
cially affiliated with that from Ohio, Illinois and 
other western states and one or two generations 
removed from the Atlantic slope. New England 
characteristics were in the fore. 

Therefore, to sketch the folks of Laurel Town 
as a body of unity and like color would not be 
true. The community was too newly gathered, 
too unlike in its elements, too nerve-fatigued by 
horrors of war; it was not yet closely enough 
knit by continuity of interests to have a general 
social 'Spirit. Academic life which now stamps 
the town had not evolved. The university was 
a small institution struggling with legislature 
after legislature for its very breath, and with no 
appreciable influence on the social will. Still, 
even then Laurel Town was what a professor of 
Harvard University twenty years after told me 
he found it; '*A New England town set in a 
western environment." 

After our flight from the east, and we were 
established on the farm, those with whom Pater 
already had acquaintance, through his open-air- 
seeking life and rides about Laurel Town, paid 
our Mother formal visits. We came to know 
delightful people. 



IIT lAUKEL TOWN" 75 

First, tHe family of Judge Welch of Litch- 
field, Connecticut. Mrs. Welsh had great taste 
for sociabilities, and after the habit of those 
times now and then entertained our family at 
tea; not our present four o'clock brew with 
sliced lemon and wafer, but the last hearty meal 
of the day. Her hospitality pictures itself be- 
fore me yet — her table spread with damask 
linen hanging low, set about with cold meats, 
sour conserves, biscuits hot and steaming 
through a doily, and invariably at one side the 
cover cakes, and a tall, broad glass dish holding 
boiled custard flavored with bitter almond and 
flecked with white of egg beaten to a snow and 
centring flakes of currant jelly. 

The hostess herself sat behind a shining 
silver tea service. A lucid memory and love of 
anecdotes made her the life of the party, her 
dark eyes sparkling as she related some tale of 
''Uncle Nott," a characterful president of Union 
College, or traditions of such ancestors as 
Philip van Schuyler who, about 1650, settled in 
Eensselaerwyck; of Anneke Jans, whose farm 
then lay in contest between Trinity Church of 
New York and her descendants ; of Mary Dyer, 
last martyr of religious liberty for the Quakers 
on Boston Common in 1660. 

At one of these teas our hostess told a story 



76 CERTAIN WHO DWELT 

which still lingers in my memory : — How, when 
a little girl and visiting relatives in Albany, she 
was dining with Mrs. Alexander Hamilton. An 
elderly man entered the hotePs dining room. A 
waiter gave him a chair at the table where Mrs. 
Hamilton and her youthful guest were sitting. 
At once Mrs. Hamilton's face became white, and 
she seemed deeply affected. Her discomposure 
told the steward of the contretemps and he 
changed to another table the late comer — ^Aaron 
Burr who, twenty-six years before, had shot 
Alexander Hamilton on the heights of Wee- 
hawken. 

In those early summers of our farm-life near 
Laurel Town, the ladies calling on Mater com- 
monly came in strict formality, as I said, and 
without the men of their family. They drove 
out in hacks, if they had not their own convey- 
ance, and oftenest were clad in light-colored 
silks, soft greys, blues, greens and lavenders, 
the skirts full, reaching the ground and giving 
an affect of the wearers floating. We were past 
the hoop-skirt era. But the idea which brought 
the hoop-skirt forward still survived — the idea 
that skirts are to conceal and let escape no sug- 
gestion of women's nether extremities ; not even 
the line of the knee to show. For a woman's 
dress to hint that the wearer had legs was, in 



IN LAUBEL. TOWN 77 

that mid- Victorian* day, immodest; and some 
went too far as to say no trace of a foot should 
be seen. 

In summer, diaphanous llama-lace shawls, 
white or black, pinned to the dress at the should- 
ers, half covered the gowns of these ladies ; and 
in colder weather, velvet cloaks and paisley 
shawls. Light colored kid gloved their hands, 
and in the left they almost always carried, to- 
gether with a lace-edged handkerchief, a card- 
case of mother-of-pearl, or ivory, or silver. 
Above their fine-spirited faces they wore filmy 
patches they called bonnets — ^betwitching apolo- 
gies for the head-covering that Paul, still some- 
what retentive of the Pharisee, demanded of 
women of unregenerate Corinth. 

How differently we pay our visits nowadays ; 
we of the serge or broadcloth suit, with a bona- 
fide hat on our heads! The Time-Spirit has 
wrought changes for women — the word women 
tells the whole story. We are women; they 
were ladies, and many of them would have re- 
sented any other descriptive. 

The converse of these dames commonly 

♦Why we should repeatedly say "Victorian" when we 
speak of the time's fashions in dress is not clear. Most 
of the vogues of that day, for instance that of the "modest 
and pious crinoline," were due to the taste of the Spanish 
leader of the French court. 



78 CERTAIN WHO DWELT 

dropped to the lugubrious note of the anaemic 
woman; evidences they unconsciously bore to 
their shuttiag-off from the companionship and 
ideas of the world. They would talk of the 
advantages of their old home, its fine spacious- 
ness, the narrowness and disadvantages of the 
new. But inanities of those who pass their days 
in parlors did not prevail. The optimism of 
founders and up-builders brightened these 
ladies, also. Hopeful lines of the mouth far 
outnumbered lines of despair. In a new com- 
monwealth men and women are more exactly 
companions than where conventions rule, their 
needs of each other establishing interdepend- 
ence. 

Among those early visits Mrs. Shannon^s 
stands clearest in memory. Governor Shannon, 
who had had a notable career as governor of 
Ohio, United States Minister to Mexico, and 
later governor of Kansas accompanied his wife. 
A late number of a magazine. Harper's, I think, 
lay on the table, and in it account of Tom Cor- 
win and a campaign of his against Governor 
Shannon. Naturally our parents spoke of the 
article, and this led to the retelling of one of its 
stories — how the brilliant Ohioan met Mrs. 
Shannon in a stage coach, and on learning who 
she was paid her marked courtesies; and how, 



IN LAUKEL TOWN 79 

when change of coaches came, and he was to take 
another line, the orator laid her baby Wilson 
on her lap with the remark that he would soon 
lay the old Governor as flat on his back as he 
was now laying the young governor; thus dis- 
closing to Mrs. Shannon who the gentleman of 
cavalier politeness really was. 

Still, of the callers that afternoon, I recall 
more plainly Sallie Shannon — the most beauti- 
ful human creature I have ever seen. Not at- 
tractiveness of color, but the higher beauty, ex- 
quisite proportion and expression, marked her 
in every way — a perfectly modeled forehead, 
nose and chin, delicately curved mouth and fine 
complexion, back of which shown limpid, lus- 
trous eyes of grey and brown hair. She wore a 
close-fitting, black-silk frock (the family were in 
half-mourning), a band of tiny, white French 
roses forming the collar. 

A little later on, when fame of her beauty had 
gone abroad, she paid the penalty public admir- 
ation exact, whether of poet, orator or a beauti- 
ful woman. Self-consciousness settled on her 
countenance. But at this day of which I speak, 
she was about eighteen, like a lily blossoming 
out of sheer loveliness. She bore herself with 
grace and the repose convents stamp, or at any 
rate stamped, upon girls bred in their cloisters. 



80 CEBTAIN WHO DWELT 

In those days I did not know the artificiality, 
and her native beauty sent me, a flapper, into 
hushed wonder. I wanted to gaze upon her till 
her form and face were photographed on some 
sensitized tablet of memory — ^just as later I felt 
before the perfection of old scidpture. 

In those days, too, we saw Mr. John Hutch- 
ings, and his winsome wife who had the gift of 
singing English, Scottish and Irish songs with 
their native simplicity and tenderness. At times 
Mr. and Mrs. Hutchings would bring friends, 
for instance the later lamented Elliot V. Banks, 
and then we delighted in stories told with strik- 
ing clarity and conciseness ; a quality springing, 
I fancied, from lawyers' practise in brief- 
writing. 

One of these occasions an intense heat drove 
as out of doors, to the shade of an oak upon 
whose trunk a red-headed woodpecker kept re- 
currently drumming. Some one brought up the 
fact that the day was the centenary of the birth 
of Napoleon; and what the Corsican did, his 
love of the tinsel of feudalism, his rhetorical 
successes and the significance of his failure in- 
formed the talk that afternoon. 

At another visit, an Independence Day din- 
ner, our guests told how they fled the morning 
of Quantrell's raid, and, pointing towards acres 



IN LAUKEL. TOWN 81 

skirting the Kaw, said the tall com* of lEat rich 
loam saved their lives by concealing them as 
they ran, 

n 

Sufferings of Laurel Town at the hands of its 
enemies and during its early years spoke 
through legends innumerable in our after-days. 
Let one alone bear witness ; the story of a ser- 
viceable hoop-skirt. 

Now, we know that a farthingale, as our fore- 
mothers of Queen Elizabeth's time called a 
hooped petticoat, a farthingale is hardly the best 
sort of a lorry for carrying valuables from a be- 
leaguered city. In stirring old times of Queen 
Bess, and in the renewed fashion of Queen 
Anne's day, rumors now and then went abroad 
that a man had in great stress, for instance to 
save his life, been secreted in their ample coop 
or go-cart. I doubt not that farthingales, and 
women in farthingales, in those earlier cen- 
turies, did heroic deeds. Else women would not 
have been women. But the story of what this 
farthingale accomplished in Laurel Town, in 
Kansas, in the year 1863, is so good that it 
ought to have a headline all to itself. There- 
fore, will Mr. Printer kindly insert in small, 
black, fat caps ; 



82 CEKTAIN WHO DWELT 

the legend of the serviceablb 
hoop-skirt 

Quant rell and his band got into Laurel Town 
that morning of the 21st of August, 1863, with- 
out discovery. How they did no one ever could 
tell. 

One report had it that Sallie Young was seen 
ahorseback in the early grey of the day, her 
pony loping over the level towards Frank- 
lin, and that she led in the chief and pointed out 
the houses of Yankee Free-Staters — all in mem- 
ory of their youthful friendship over in Ohio. 
But the story had little credit among the clearer- 
minded. And from what I saw of Sallie Young 
years after, still a buxom woman in Governor 
Shannon^s household, I should call the tale ab- 
surd. 

Quantrell knew every inch of Laurel Town. 
In earlier years he had lived there. No one 
needed to point him the way. 

That August morning, however, no one doubt- 
ed Quantrell was in town. His two hundred and 
ninetynfour **border ruffians?', their chief at 
their head, came over the south-east prairie like 
a devastating whirlwind. 

Daring and deviltry had marked these bush- 
whackers from the beginning of the Civil War. 



IN LAUREL TOWN 83 

Desperadoes all of them, they nested in the Sni 
hills near Kansas City, and from dense woods 
and impenetrable underbrush dashed out for 
raids. Then, after their plundering and burn- 
ing, a superb horsemanship permitted their 
speedily racing back and concealing themselves, 
at times among the brakes of the Blackwater 
river, but more often in their fastnesses of lofty 
ledged bluffs alternating with deep ravines lead- 
ing to the Sni and the Blue. 

Such deeds as these of theirs Eobin Hood is 
reported to have done in Sherwood Forest of 
England some seven hundred years ago, and in 
a milder manner ; Robin and his outlaws aiming 
to dispense rude justice by robbing rich Nor- 
mans and endowing poor Saxons. These bandits 
of the border of Missouri and its western neigh- 
bor carried on their guerrillas against every in- 
terest that sought to make Kansas a free state. 

Laurel Town, that child-city, forty miles, say, 
from their ledged hills, had centered Free-State 
activities through the ten years of its existence. 
Its people had not hesitated to declare their 
stand for human freedom, their hatred of human 
slavery. Nothing more native to those times and 
places, therefore, than that border bands should 
make the town a target for their ill-will. Already 
they had tried to destroy it. And now, after 



84 CERTAIN WHO DWELT 

years of a vast, organized rebellion, they hated 
it with an intensity that only their own lurid 
invective could describe. 

The law-abiding folks of Laurel Town knew 
this resentment. Through months they kept 
patrol, and took turns in night guard. But only 
lately an order had reached them to stack their 
guns in an armory. This night of August the 
little city lay without watchers — save the stars 
of heaven. 

So it happened that Quantrell and his bush- 
whackers, bending forward on the neck of their 
mounts till each man seemed a part of the animal 
he strode — guiding the light-footed horses 
wholly by their legs, thus leaving both hands 
free to carry shooting irons — so it happened the 
bushwhackers rode through the early dawn into 
the sleeping city. 

Whooping and firing of guns awakening them, 
the people of Laurel Town instantly knew the 
fortune of the assault. Who, also, its prey. Men 
sprang from their beds and ran for hiding places 
— to an empty barrel, to a wife's fruit closet, 
through a bulk-head door just as a bandit eji- 
tered the house, pistol cocked, to shoot on sight 
any man there. 

Not only murder ; burning, too, must be essen- 
tial in putting the town to extremes. Women 



IN LAUEEL TOWN 85 

worked to quench fire eating its way np the sides 
of their houses ; and saw husband, or father, shot 
dead within touch of their hand. In one dwelling 
a stalwart outlaw laid lighted matches against 
curtains and other quickly ignited furnishings, 
while the housewife followed beating out blazes 
with her blistered fingers. Every excess of par- 
tisan warfare held sway. 

On rising ground, over near the river, stood 
the Eldridge House, a four-story brick hotel. 
This summer-season many people housed within 
its walls — travelers from a distance ; men come 
to see the beauty of the country and the arduous, 
picturesque life of the young commonwealth; 
then again, others looking for investments of 
idle money. 

Among young couples living in the hotel were 
Mr. and Mrs. Tisdale; he interested in far- 
reaching stage-coach lines; she a sweet-faced 
bride, gifted with the liveliness and brightness 
of French blood, gifted, moreover, with every 
woman's wit in a dilemma. 

This 21st day of August the beating of horses' 
hoofs and shooting of guns woke the lady from 
her morning slumbers. Sensing the cause, she 
at once began planning how to save her hus- 
band's business papers ; which she felt sure he 
would preserve if he were there. 



86 CEBTAIN WHO DWELT 

How terribly near those whoops and yells 
sounded ! 

She opened her door to the public hallway in 
hopes of another's word and counsel. An ac- 
quaintance, Mr. Thompson from New York, at 
that instant came by. The two spoke together — 
the hotel must suffer the raiders' fury, probably 
its men killed and the building fired. 

Like Mr. Tisdale, Mr. Thompson had papers 
of importance to the fortunes of himself and 
others. He told of his anxiety lest the records 
be destroyed. 

*^I have just taken my husband's from his sec- 
retary'', said the lady showing bulky folios, ** and 
I'll care for yours, too, if you wish". 

'^Can youf asked Mr. Thompson hesitating. 

'*I am sure'*, cried Mrs. Tisdale. **But run. 
Take the ferry. Or swim". 

**ril bring the papers", rejoined Mr. Thomp- 
son. *^I wish I could save some underwear", he 
added, hastening toward his room. 

**You can't", cried Mrs. Tisdale nervously. 
** Fetch the papers ; and clothes. I'll see what I 
can do. And run. Eun for the river". 

Mr. Thompson brought his belongings and 
fled. 

Mrs. Tisdale turned back to her room and 
locked her door. 



IIT LAUKEL TOWN" 87 

Silence now reigned in front of the hotel. 
The bushwhackers were parleying for delivery 
into their hands of the bnilding and its people. 

In the peace of these minutes Mrs. Tisdale 
hung her hoop-skirt from a nail, and with twine 
bound on the inner side of the steels all the 
legal papers in her care. Little pieces of under- 
wear, half the comfort of living, she also tied 
fast till the crinoline looked like a beehive of 
red-tape documents and wads of cloth. 

She slipped the hoops over her head and 
buckled the belt. A couple of petticoats. Sur- 
mounting the structure with a dimity frock and 
silk mantilla, she took her bag (in those days 
called reticule) in hand and passed down the 
stairs to the ** Ladies' Entrance'' — just round the 
comer from the main doors where the bandits 
were completing their terms of the surrender. 

Her hoopskirt swayed with its burden. The 
unexpected weight of the luggage nearly over- 
came her. But with heart as strong as resource- 
fulness clever, she would be the last to let the 
load affect her light step and calm countenance. 

Not far off she met a group of raiders ; some 
clad in butternut ; a few vain-gloriously rigged 
in red-top boots, coats with linings turned out- 
side to gratify their taste for color, and rad 
handkerchiefs tied about their swarthy necks. 



88 CEKTAIN WHO DWELT 

** Terrible, but picturesque !'' she said to her- 
self. 

Then she saw them demanding gold trinkets 
from other women, even searching the women's 
pockets ; and this led her to go a trifle timor- 
ously. One ruffian did swagger towards her and 
call out that here they might find booty. His 
companions, possibly satiated by some good for- 
tune, told him to come with them. 

At last, breathless and quivering, Mrs. Tis- 
dale reached the river, and in time to catch the 
ferry. On the other side she would find friends. 
There, too, her husband would join her on his 
return from Fort Leavenworth. 

The boat finally made the north bank. 

Why did she back away? — ^her stricken com- 
rades asked when they pressed' towards her as 
she stepped upon the sand. No word, merely 
waving her hand and seeking a clump of willows. 

A minute after she came forth "holding up to 
full view her freighted farthingale. And then 
the relaxation of a smile spread over every anx- 
ious countenance as she untied and handed Mr. 
Thompson his legal papers, adding a pair of 
stockings. Many had fled in scant clothing and 
her gifts served their needs. 

Yellow smoke, plumed by the wind of a soft 
summer morning, now rolled skyward, and the 



IN" LAUKEL TOWN 89 

refugees stood straining eyes to lengthen their 
vision, guessing from whose house this cloud, or 
that cloud, might have risen. They had not long 
to wait before flames shot from the roof of the 
Eldridge House; and little longer till its brick 
walls alone remained to witness to the building's 
uses. 

Human worth — what human courage could do 
to save men from murder and homes from burn- 
ing — that day sent down maay a legacy and 
sanctified the little city to all posterity. 

But the retiring bushwhackers? Union sol- 
diers traced them by their horses' footprints, 
and, reports said, next day came upon their 
rear. Yet lacking orders, they made no attack. 

[After a fortnight, in endeavor at Paola to or- 
ganize retaliatory measures. General James H. 
Lane claimed that the ranking officers were 
rebel-sympathizers, and that ruffians would de- 
vastate the whole Kansas border: — ** There is 
one remedy only, and that lies in the people's 
hands. The way to kill wolves is to hunt them 
in their dens. The way to exterminate snakes is 
to crush them in their nests. The way to punish 
Quantrell and his band is to make a burning hell 
of Missouri." 

This appeal sent out several companies of 
cavalry; who, however, found no way to effect- 



90 CEKTAIN WHO DWELT 

ive reprisal. In the end the guerrillas paid light- 
ly for their raid on Laurel Town. 

Unequal payment often evented in other inter- 
tribal wars — for instance, in the old encounters 
of Scotch highlander with Scotch lowlander; 
Irish clan with Irish clan ; English faction with 
Welsh. Yet with this difference in result be- 
tween mediaeval conditions and our own : — 

While in earlier centuries Quantrell might 
have seized the stricken town, and gained a 
feudal title, say, **Earl of the Douglas Marshes'', 
or *^Lord of Laurel Town", in our democratic 
and more truth-telling days he was merely 
branded a brutal bushwhaclifer, and, rumor told, 
fearing some mortal might seek vengeance, in 
years following the war he concealed his name 
and his whereabouts. 



in 

Colonization fires the fancy of nearly all kinds 
of people. First it seizes the strong, the ad- 
venturous, who must express their life in deeds, 
who are articulate through action rather than 
speech. Not infrequently high-spirited and im- 
aginative, such men and women gave color and 
individuality to Laurel Town in its earlier days. 



IN LAUREL TOWN 91 

They liad settled with intent of working out 
a free state, and to found institutions embodying 
truth and justice— -bent, that is, on concreting 
such principles as Anglo-Saxons have endeav- 
ored after these last eight hundred years. They 
lived ardent, constructive lives. 

Their circumstances were narrow. They un- 
derstood the nobility of self-helpfulness, and 
perforce practised William Penn's advice, 
**Have little to do, and do it thyself '\ Their 
houses, a well-read Laurel Townsman once de- 
clared, called to mind Lord Hervey's quip 
about the villa an Earl of Burlington built; 
**Too small to live in, and too large to hang to 
a watch." 

Even in years a little later, when we knew the 
burg, its people retained the venture someness of 
the colonizer and, bristling with ** corners", re- 
fused to be dovetailed into community methods 
and community manners. They made no secret 
of their despising conventionalities as tyranny 
— in those days, one must not forget, the sane 
spirit of gratitude that evented from the Civil 
War warmed every heart ; the old, basic Ameri- 
can habit of mind prevailed, the benef active, the 
benevolent; that outlook on life that gave this 
country laws and stable government, and invited 
other peoples to share the good of their labors ; 



92 CEBTAIN WHO DWELT 

the old American mental attitude, altruistic and 
helpful to the degree that when a stranger en- 
tered a yard and walked towards an owner sit- 
ting on his porch, he met the salutation: ^^Grood 
morning, sir, what can I do for youf '* 

In those old Laurel Town days a considerable 
percentage of the people prospered on what has 
repeatedly kept colonists alive; "I have always 
fed on illusions", wrote one, awakening to fact 
at the end of a long life. So often did they mis- 
take creatures of their mind for realities and in- 
sistently deceive themselves, that they did 
astonishing deeds. 

Individualists of ripest harvest, ** originals," 
** eccentrics," you see, thinking their own pun- 
gent thoughts so vividly that they dared to 
speak them; piquant, often polemic, sometimes 
seemingly irreverent, always forceful, effective, 
clean, and blessed with the cool, straight-to-the- 

*We had not yet passed through the immigrants' gate 
millions of foreigners, often boorish in breeding, saturated 
with anarchies and socialisms generated, like malignant, 
febrile plagues, in ineradicable slums of Eastern Europe, 
and traveling westward — we had not yet passed through 
the immigrants' gate spouters and adherents of six)uters 
of vague, silly inaccurate isms ; incapable of balanced reason- 
ing ; transf ering their hostilities towards feudalisms of their 
old home to our country, and abusing us and institutions 
we afford them — inflooders whose only query seeming to be, 
"What can you do for me?" do not delay for verbalisms, 
but proceed by exploiture to answer their question them- 
selves. 



IN LAUREL TOWN" 93 

point independence of the New Englander; ex- 
pressing themselves not in 

"Taffata phrases, silken terms precise," 

but, rather, baldly speaking 

"In russet yeas, and honest kersey noes". 

Of that sort was Mrs. Plympton, centre of 
surpassing stories; a spare dame with promi- 
nent nose, thin, compressed lips, broad, reflective 
brow and blunt action. 

** Mother, what would you like for your birth- 
day f asked a son of hers, the one she described 
as *'more Christ-like" than her other children, 
**Blue silk for a dress or black?" 

* ' Oh, get it black," returned the lady sturdily, 
** black does for funerals as well as weddings." 

There you have it — stern, stiff, old Anglo- 
Saxon stock, yet so vision-eyed, tear-eyed, ten- 
der-hearted, too, in its depths, that it keeps itself 
from whimpering and blubbering only by press- 
ing back emotion ; a stock so averse to falsehood 
that it distrusts emotion as a fleeting thing and 
wipes expression of sentiment out of its daily 
life; a blood that has worked out world-com- 
pelling ideals and in accord with the law that 
great thoughts come from the heart. 

A Vermont man whom the family had known 
before they trekked in white-sailed prairie- 



94 CERTAIN WHO DWELT 

schooner over western lands — a Vermont man 
sought a daughter of this dame in marriage. 
The bride followed the habit of women-kind the 
world over, and went back with her husband 
to his home. Not long to enjoy life, however. 
Upon her death, naturally and conventionally, 
her body was laid in the Green Mountain bury- 
ing ground of her husband. There several years 
it rested. 

At the end of such a time, for some reason 
later days do not disclose, Mrs. Plympton de- 
termined the reliques should be brought to 
Laurel Town for final burial. 

Now, in such a settlement as Laurel Town, 
leastwise as Laurel Town was, each family knew 
the general lines of neighbors' lives. Mrs. 
Plympton had openly told she was going to ask 
Enoch for her daughter's remains. Afterwards 
she said he had agreed to her petition. Neigh- 
bors had eyes as well as ears. They knew the 
mortuary box arrived, and was carried to the 
mother's house. 

Time passed into weeks. One afternoon a 
near-door dweller dropped in for half an hour's 
confabulation. The caller followed her alert 
and busy hostess to the part of the house where 
her duties that hour were lying, and at last 
spoke of Mrs. Plympton's probable satisfaction 



IN LAUREL TOWN 95 

in having tlie mortality of her daughter brought 
home. 

**Will there be any service at the final inter- 
ment at Laurel Townf 

**No," returned Mrs. Plympton. She stood 
at her ironing board, generations of refined 
thought illuminating her face, and her own in- 
nate dignity speaking from her person. '^I 
had the coffin put down cellar. 

**If I had been a man,*' she added reflectively, 
gazing with vision-suifused eyes into the im- 
personal spaces of the yard, ^'I should have been 
a doctor. I've always had such a longing to 
study the human skeleton ! But I never had a 
chance before.'* 

A ghoulish story, you exclaim. And playing 
back in the recesses of your mind is the wonder 
if Mrs. Plympton made her request of Enoch in 
order to satisfy her craving for the scientific 
analysis to which she was confessedly subjecting 
her daughter's poor bones. Not by measure of 
the average mind. 

Mrs. Plympton's was not the average mind, 
however — rather a mind with native cravings 
choked back through long years of devotion to 
husband and bairns and now, at last, finding 
pathetic gratification. An afterthought, doubt- 
less, her * ^ study of the human skeleton," spring- 



96 CERTAIN WHO DWELT 

ing when sentiment had satisfied itself and 
mental equipoise supervened. In her conceal- 
ing and suppressing an inborn gift — ^led to such 
conduct plainly enough by moral sense of duties 
she assumed when she married — the world may 
have lost a notable anatomist. 

But listen to another tale — ^this macabre, too. 
Yet unadulterated truth brings a happier end. 

A phrase-maker of Kansas, and the state has 
had many, once said that its climate was ** al- 
ways too 'nough or too none.'* Amidst plenty 
of heat and no rain, Laurel Town had another 
ghostly happening. 

One summe)r-day express offices under the 
Eldridge House received a long, narrow box; 
which was pushed to one side to await its can- 
signee, Ephraim Quat. 

An odd-looking box ; and it did not strike the 
clerks of the office agreeably. The day after its 
arrival, glancing towards that part of the room 
where it lay, they began protesting one to an- 
other : 

'^Have you noticed? Positively offensive!'' 

' * Strange name that — Ephraim Quat 1" 

**Quat! Quat! What Quat?'' 

** Never heard anything like it here." 

** Sounds as if it were made up." 

**I think it is fiction." 



IN LATJBEL TOWK 97 

* 'Wouldn't wonder if those six boards con- 
cealed some crime." 

**Its very sliapc shows the box holds a coflSnl" 

Each hour its presence became more intoler- 
able. By the day's closing the whole force were 
sickened, as well as ghost-haunted. And when 
the sun sank round and red, portending hot 
weather still on the morrow, it was not difficult 
to conclude the box must be laid in a kindly, 
concealing earth. 

Next morning, just as the office-doors opened, 
a gentleman of the old soft-mannered type, 
white-haired, white-cravated, long-black-coated, 
a staunch Episcopaliaa, known as *^Lord'' Den- 
man because of punctilious courtesy and other 
qualities the title **lord'' supposedly connotes — 
Lord Denman chanced to come in errand about 
a parcel. 

He listened with sympathy to the murmurs 
beginning afresh, and found it not hard to sense 
the grounds of the complaint. ** Surely," he 
said to the protesting clerks, **the box is a thing 
intolerable.'' 

To aid to their relief, he added, he would 
accompany the body to the cemetery, and, since 
his rector was out of town, help bury it with 
last rites of the churcL 

^That's the right thing for everybody," the 



VM CEKTAIN WHO DWELT 

clerks declared, *^and especially justice for the 
unhappy unclaimed." 

Without further delay they commandeered an 
express wagon to take away the remains, and 
calling a hack for Lord Denman, and such pitiful 
and curious bystanders as offered to serve as 
pall-bearers, they drove to the burying ground. 

There, in a peace unbroken save by the voice 
of birds and rustle of oak leaves, Lord Denman 
solemnly read the ritual for * ' The Burial of the 
Dead," and they sank the case in the resting 
place the sexton had prepared. 

What relief every one felt! The natural 
buoyancy of the younger returned as they drove 
back to the office. The elder estimated their 
work as a humane deed for some unknown, 
possibly mistreated mortal. All agreed they 
had done as they would be done by, and had 
freed themselves from an offence that had 
reached the very face of heaven. 

A day or two after this outpouring of com- 
passion, a husky, well-overhauled, young farmer 
drove up, and sprang from Ms mud-stained 
spring-wagon. 

**rm expecting a box," he said as he entered 
the express-room. **Had it sent to Laurel 
Town for your office is nearer than any other to 
my place in Tonganoxie." 



IIT I^UEEL TOWIT 99 

**Wliat name?" asked a clerk. 

**Ephraim Quat/' answered Mr. Farmer. 

Nervous glances from every clerk. 

**Yes, we had such a box.'' 

**Had such a box!" 

**But we had to bury it." 

**Bury it!" echoed Mr. Quat, ^^Whyf' 

**Well, if you 'd come in the day after the box 
got here," called out one of the bolder of the 
office force, **your nose would have told you 
why." 

The consignee could make nothing out of the 
history they gave him, and a few minutes later 
the express clerks again levied on a company- 
wagon, and taking with them the mystified Mr. 
Quat, drove to the cemetery. Work now was 
to dig up the box. And then the task of exam- 
ing its contents ! 

They were willing to handle a digger's shovel, 
but at the duty of unfastening and lifting off 
the lid each man shied — all save Mr. Quat whose 
conscience made him fearless, whose zeal to get 
back to his work drove him on. 

He talked lightly, the express boys felt, when 
he took a screw-driver from his pocket. '*Any 
of you know a rain-maker?" he queried. **How 
I do hone for a regular, all-day drizzle," he con- 
tinued as he worked at loosening the cover. 



100 CEKTAIN WHO DWELT 

**tlie sort tHat comes soft and wets deep, not a 
pelter that pounds down and runs off and doesn't 
strike in more 'n an inch. 

**Not a cloud as big as a tax commissioner's 
mercy in sight," he added, squinting at the hori- 
zon. ^VWell, it's ploughing this afternoon for 
me." 

Finally, all fastenings out, he carefully raisea 
the top board. Packed in waste and wrappeci 
in newspapers lay the new ** fixings" he had 
ordered for his farm machinery. 

Joy mixed with shamefacedness filled the 
wagon which brought men and case back to 
Laurel Town. 

**What could have been," the express boys 
asked themselves, *Hhat made the air of the 
office so insufferable those days the box stood 
there?" 

They were never able to tell. Perhaps they 
became sensitive about the matter. Leastwise, 
no word ever escaped to Lord Denman that they 
had resurrected the unhappy mortal over whom 
he, deeply moved, had conducted sacramental 
liturgies. 

As for Ephraim Quat — ^he started home be- 
fore noon declaring himself mighty glad to get 
those fittings, and he now hoped to plant his 
winter wheat within a fortnight. 



IN LAUEEL TOWN 101 

IV 

** Nature/' said a witty Kansan speaking of 
colonization appealing to others than the strong, 
** Nature is profuse with her Dirt, and sparing 
of her Deity." 

Colonization does strike the fancy of a flying 
squadron of the Half-baked — ^people who, so far 
as mental grasp goes, pass through life a sort 
o' babe-needing-incubator-nursing; people un- 
able to comprehend eternal verities; incapable 
of standards ; with not a notion of the price the 
human race has paid for the modicum of truth it 
possesses. A citizen coming to my mind's eye 
as I write affords fair example; a squash- 
headed old boy, (his face suggested to you a 
gourd of the yellow variety) who bragged he 
had had no schooling since he was twelve; 
who would, for instance, go one evening to a 
** spiritualistic seance," and with the same 
approachment sit at home next night and read 
Emerson. 

Yes, new settlements do also attract the Half- 
baked ; folks one-sidedly intelligent, hardly ever 
articulate through the hand or any medium 
except the tongue, but articulate through the 
tongue to an astounding degree; people whose 
main aim in the realm of morals seems, in the 



102 CEKTAIN WHO DWELT 

phrase of our Milesian friends, *Ho give a saus- 
age and take a ham." 

That sort has long accompanied colonists. 
Tales nearly, or quite, three thousand years old 
tell of Thersites in a Greek settlement. 

The identical law held at Laurel Town. Half- 
bakeds were not lacking. Under this family 
name, however, stood various genera de- 
scribed in that day^s idiom, more often spoken 
than written — a speech not elegant, but 
grounded in truth and winged by fancy — as 
**sap-heads," **un-mit-i-ga-ted ahsses," **pinky- 
dinkies," ** bone-heads, ** pin-heads," **natural- 
bom-durn fools," and so on. 

To trade on another's strength in achieve- 
ment, to deplete another's vitality, and again to 
do deeds that made the stronger explode in a 
laughter darkening the eyelids with tears and 
as unquenchable as the immortals', seemed the 
role of Half-bakeds in the community drama. 
Commonly they acted their part well. 

Not infrequently their sayings, or doings, 
were a coming to the surface of Anglo-Saxon 
** temperament;" or of that generous, laughter- 
loving, hey-nonny-nonny, gifted-with-words, 
devil-may-care blood — willingness to be led, 
lack of clarity and singleness of purpose that 
sometimes distinguishes Irish Celts, Long 



IN LAUKEL TOWN 103 

life to them! May their number never grow 
less! 

The tragi-comedy of newly married pair liv- 
ing at the Eldridge House serves an example. 

A hotel is well enough for folks in health. 
In fact, for such a hotel is to be tolerated. But 
surely it is no place for an invalid. 

And now the force majeure of the newly 
wedded pair, the lady, that is, fell ill and had 
need of home nursing. She was so sick, indeed, 
that she could not sit up to ride from the hostel 
in public hack or private carriage ; and no such 
conveyance as an ambulance comforted Laurel 
Town in those days. Yet leave the hotel she 
must. 

Her husband spent the night at his wits' end. 
Early in the morning he called in a maid of the 
house, and towards noon they had the lady 
ready for setting out — ^having clothed her in a 
pale-green silk visiting-frock, shoeing her feet 
with white satin slippers and covering her hands 
with white kid gloves. Then they laid her upon 
a lounge and rested from their labors. 

Four stalwart negroes now £Qed into the room. 
Ranging themselves, one at each of its comers, 
they lifted the lounge and bore it down the 
broad general stairway. 

Out in the street a July snn struck down in 



104 CERTAIN WHO DWELT 

the pitiless way the sun has when appearing in 
the guise of the Slayer. The lady must not 
suffer Apollo's darts. Therefore her husband, 
walking alongside, carried in his left hand the 
dame's parasol, which matched her green silk 
visiting-frock, and with its shade protected her 
face ; while he kept her from fainting by fanning 
her with her white-satin gilt-spangled fan. 

Thus the sextette, and the lounge, moved 
along the sidewalk of the main street of Laurel 
Town, and down the thoroughfare's busiest 
blocks. The hour was noon, when the ** panta- 
loon folks" of environing farms had driven in 
for supplies and stood smoking and gossiping 
under awnings, or tying their horses at the curb. 
Women, too, were now marketing and shopping ; 
and merchants setting forth their wares. 

Naturally everybody held up his business to 
look. But the sextette went on, and finally 
reached the home of the lady's mother-in-law ; 
where she was safely put to bed. 

Yet the adventure had a charming ending. 
For the invalid got back her health and bloom, 
and the green silk frock had merrier, even if 
less attention-compelling excursions. 

Many another laughter-laden tale went leap- 
ing from lip to lip. And yet not far behind 
lay picturesque times. Only five years before 



IN LAUKEL TOWN 105 

the scout of a Union colonel used every day to 
promenade the streets in a black velvet suit. 
An embossed morocco belt held his coat snugly 
about his body, but the main end of the girdle 
was to carry a pair of ivory-mounted revolvers. 
Eed sheepskin leggings covered his calves; and 
a military hat, set off with a flowing black plume 
topped his splendor. 

Then there was the dame who went about in 
the innovating ** Bloomers" of the day. One of 
the town-wits, sitting on the sidewalk, his armed 
chair tipped back against the wall of the Eld- 
ride House (loafers of a town are most often 
wits of a town ; busy folks do not find leisure for 
antitheses) — one of Laurel Town's wits, slothing 
one afternoon as the Bloomers lady passed, ex- 
claimed (possibly from the habit men have 
long had of criticising women's ways and deeds), 
**They ought to catch that woman, and cut off 
her legs to match her skirts.'* The force of this 
remark is plainer, possibly, if you turn back to 
pages seventy-six and seven foregoing, and read 
of the power of the petticoat in those days. 

But you may be crying, ** Monstrous, an in- 
tolerable deal of sack to one half -pennyworth of 
bread !" Still, after all, a whole pennyworth of 
truth lies in what garrulous, old Jean de Join- 
ville told in his chronicles, some three hundred 



106 CERTAIN WHO DWELT 

years, by the bye, before Shakespeare wrote the 
famous advice of Polonius; ^'We ought to dress 
in such a way that the more observing of man- 
kind may not think we clothe ourselves too 
finely, nor the younger too meanly." 

An Anglo-Saxon child-city in Kansas is, after 
all, much like the rest of the world. To say its 
folks in those earlier years of Laurel Town were 
of like dye would, I repeat, not be true. Yet all 
bore the shade of the Kansan; a possibility a 
greater fact exemplifies: — In this country our 
Anglo-Saxon foreparents erected on Anglo- 
Saxon principles, attracting peoples from all 
round the globe — else why do they come here? 
to get advantages and opportunities they could 
not obtain in their old home — in this country, 
west and east even to the seas, neither are the 
people of the various states of like dye ; and yet 
you see every child of them, whatever the shade 
of his state, stamped with the unmistakable color 
of the American. 

Mysteries at times haunted Laurel Town. 
For instance, there was the English lady whose 
face bore the imprint of imbecility; a young 
woman of the fleshly, Eubens type, fastidiously 
dressed, guarded, never speaking to any one, 
every day taking a constitutional with two 
young men walking either side of her. Gossip 



IN LAUBEL. TOWN 107 

said the men were her husband and brother, and 
that the lady owned the fortune upon which the 
three lived. They suddenly appeared in Laurel 
Town ; then after a time were gone. 

Men and women at that day mysteries, to this 
day mysteries — lives which had not met conven- 
tional demands **back east," or in England, 
Scotland, Ireland, Germany and other countries ; 
people who had, possibly, made a marriage dis- 
tasteful to relatives, or had deviated from rule, 
maxim, or even the written law, such were at 
times shipped or themselves wandered to the 
Middle West. When they had the best of luck 
they got off the train at Laurel Town. 

Provided they staid put and did not disturb 
the comfort of stronger factors in the old home, 
they lived at ease upon transmitted support. To 
all such incomers Laurel Town was undeniably 
a Utopia, if they were thankful-hearted, and a 
bit of a Cairo in Egypt, refuge of mysterious 
folks from sundry parts of the world, or a Bot- 
any Bay, also receptacle of nondescripts, if they 
longed for their own blood and its associations. 

Then others besides those abounding in 
strength and love of adventure, and high-spirit- 
edness, and imaginativeness; and besides those 
suffering minor moral misadventures; other 
folk came who had failed elsewhere — a shoe- 



108 CEKTAIN WHO DWELT 

inercliant, a general store-keeper, clergymen of 
various denominations, each unfortunate want- 
ing to bury past experiences and try to win life's 
guerdon again. And prosperous issue often 
took up abode with such workers — praise be to 
their persistence ! 

Again there occasionally landed in Laurel 
Town people so successful that they seemingly 
astonished themselves — people whom fate had 
lifted to a condition more prosperous than their 
ambition had ever vaulted to ; and they had un- 
consciously come to attribute their own stunned 
state of the mind to their neighbors. 

Such possibly was Colonel Perry. His 
colonel's title may have been a relic of militia 
training, or remains of the Civil War. Be that 
as it may, although from the old, refined Ameri- 
can stock, he entered Laurel Town with a hoop- 
la, buying speedily one of its most spacious 
dwellings, driving about with spanking bays in 
clattering harnesses, setting up a bank, and de- 
claring his wife had **nothing else to do but sit 
in her parlor and cut off coupons." As to him- 
self I hesitate to report his exact words. Well, 
then, mind you, in a low voice and only for the 
reason you insist — ^he said — ^he was **f airly 
lousy with money." That comes of your in- 
sisting I 



IK lAURETi TOWN" 109 

** Dramatic !'' you exclaim, recovering from the 
shock. Yes. You know old New England blood 
is not given to attitudinizing. Large natures 
are simple, direct, straightforward, truthful, not 
addicted to tricks and sinuosities. Old New 
England blood is not apt to be dramatio in the 
cramping, three-wall stage of a theatre built by 
man ; rather only in the vast theatre which has 
earth^s mountains for its back-curtain, river- 
valleys for its wings, rolling prairies for its 
floor and the Almighty as scene-shifter; and in 
dramas of self-denial, self-reliance, religious 
consecration; works which would shame the 
Titans. In such theatres of God Anglo-Saxon 
blood has played, here in America, various of 
the greatest dramas of mankind. 

That blood is commonly too sincere, too un- 
conscious of any but its duties to be dramatic in 
posturings, in phrases. **He that is lavish in 
words," said our kinsman of the stock. Sir Wal- 
ter Ealeigh, **he that is lavish in words, is a 
niggard in deeds.'' 

And yet Colonel Perry and his family came 
from a Connecticut town! How it happened, 
what urgency led to the exodus, no one could 
tell. The Colonel may have fallen heir, as we 
above intimated, to a sum which, to an unimag- 
inative mind, had no end. Mortals sometimes 



110 CERTAIN WHO DWELT 

suffer that way. And when the experience 
comes, they not infrequently want to slough off 
the old home and find new fields for their ac- 
tivities. 

In this instance in Laurel Town, as reports 
elsewhere, money made the mare go. Griitter 
of new things, and rattle, especially of harnesses 
of high-stepping steeds, attract. Folk's less 
colorful, less temperamental^ of the soft-grey 
weave of respectahility and quiet manners, 
rushed to call upon the new arrivals. 

The daughter Maggie, not openly disdainful 
of, hut seemingly disregarding Laurel Town 
girls, imported a confidante from her old home. 
One evening the two were at a party Mrs. Means 
gave to her visiting sister. 

A thunder storm had crashed down upon 
Laurel Town that afternoon. Eain came in 
sheets. Thunder rolled so continuously that it 
seemed one vast rumble, now in the zenith, now 
off on the horizon. And electricity had been 
so fluidly intense that it fairly balled in red 
light and shot about amid the greenery. 

After the storm the air stood in drenched 
stillness, weary with excessive action. From 
the land vapors slowly rose and stood envelop- 
ing Mount Oread. Birds kept silent. Leaves 
hung in perpendicular from weight of the waters 



IN LAUKEL TOWN 111 

which had washed them. Masses stood out, 
their every feather-tip surfeited. 

The evening of this superb spectacle, when 
supper was serving a thin, little voice shrilled, 
**Do bring me some pepper. "Why! I never eat 
ice-cream without pepper.'' The speaker was 
Maggie. 

** Pepper!" I exclaimed to myself. ** Shades 
of Brillat-Savarin ! If it were ginger; that 
might conserve taste."* 

Not long after the pepper-box service Miss 
Maggie married a suitor who had come for her 
all the way from the Connecticut valley. Her 
daddy's bank closed its doors. G^ossip said he 
had fallen by the wiles of Income, a jade ever 
deceitful and flippant in intimacies ; and in spite 
of the parasitic conditions which he declared he 
suffered at the time of his dramatic debut in 
Laurel Town, Income had given him the mitten. 

Purse-pride rarely touched Laurel Townf oik. 
Their self-gratulation had its fountain in self- 
reliant honesty of purpose, action, speech, for 
the most part, and in like sturdy qualities of 

♦Perhaps the order was more qualmish because in those 
days I was delighting in the twenty-four books of "The 
Iliad," even to the heroes' feasts. Then, too, that was 
years before I had seen much besides our old Anglo-Ameri- 
can cookery ; before I had seen foreign epicures, and 
Americans imitating foreigners, serve such mix-ups as roast 
chicken en garniture with onions and cauliflower. 



112 CERTAIN WHO DWELT 

ancestor and race. After all, it was only the 
newly rich who flaunted pride of purse and put 
their money into display. 



The social life of the little burg fell mainly 
along cleavages of church membership — a fact 
often true of older and larger cities. In Laurel 
Town it was sun-clear. 

Now, just as the Puritan, his self-government, 
his demand for individual freedom, is the very 
core of our American nationality to-day, so his 
compelling spirituality has colored all religions 
in our midst. 

At times you met the Puritaas' stem sincerity, 
their fidelity to principle, their contempt for 
riches and prosperity when weighed against the 
moral law. Again you found the touching con- 
viction, deep-seated in our hearts and causing 
rigid self-examination — again and again you 
saw the rudimentary moral conviction, pathetic 
in its reversion to early Hebrew ideas, that ma- 
terial prosperity walks hand in hand with moral 
goodness, an enduring witness of the approval 
of the Supreme Giver. 

And you heard over and over the demand that 



IN LAUBEL TOWN 113 

no power stand between the weak human and 
the Lasting Type — naturally you would in a 
state whose life, not far back, had been intense 
and dramatic. 

^^Don^t you," hotly asked a clergyman of a 
staid and blameless resident of the little city, 
*^ Don't you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ f 

**Yes, I do," returned the laic, rising to the 
same degree of heat. **But there are too damned 
many middlemen. 

**I have sometimes feared," the layman went 
on, *Hhat Kansas might become what Andrew 
Lang defined India to be." 

**What! — ^what's that?" asked the cleric turn- 
ing swiftly and eying his companion. 

* * The secular home of driveling creeds and of 
religion in her sacerdotage," calmly answered 
the citizen. 

Religion's practical expression-— we do not 
speak of religion itself, communion between the 
soul and the Infinite and consequent peace and 
trust; but practical religion, our duty to give 
ourselves to human works in helpfulness, in 
truth and joy had open force those days in 
Laurel Town. All citizens knew that a man may 
hide himself in every other way, but he can not 
in his works — a momentous law which holds true 
of women, also. 



114 CEKTAIN WHO DWELT 

The story of how the Episcopal ladies took in 
washing bears witness: — 

Those workers of picturesque Trinity wanted 
to buy a new carpet for the main aisle ; or per- 
haps they were after new bellows for the organ ; 
something of the sort, at any rate. 

**It happened years ago,^ said the man who 
told the tale, * *and I've been doing a lot of think- 
ing ever since, till IVe concluded roping in our 
wives and mothers is a sneaking way we have of 
fixing up our churches — ^we men in business 
meetings voting a thing shall be done and leav- 
ing the women to gath-er money to pay for it. 

**In this town, and in others, too, I've seen 
the game played a^ain and again. And did you 
ever find the women failing to rise to the occa- 
sion? — ^wh'at with their oyster-suppers and 
chicken-dinners^ their Saturday morning sales 
of pies and cakes, their rummage-auctions and 
every other means their clever heads and faith- 
ful hearts can plan and willing hands execute! 

**I notice the Presbyterians, at least in Laurel 
Town, don't so often resort to such subterfuges 
for church up-keep. There's some incalculable 
thing in Presbyterian teachings, it seems to me, 
that makes good financiers — some indefinable 
quality acting on the mind and judgment. That's 
irue of the Unitarians', also; and true of the 



IN LAUEELi TOWN 115 

Jews\ Perhaps it is because their religion is 
not so emotional. They don't submerge them- 
selves in a surging sea of sensations which have 
no deedy outlet. Their devotees are more mas- 
ters of themselves, calmly abiding in a sort of 
practical religiosity — like a Jacob's, prayerful, 
yet subtle — not swaying in mysticism, choking 
for utterance of what can not be put into human 
words. Where Prcsbyterianism prevails the 
people are canny. 

**But I'm losing my story. As I was saying, 
in those times the ladies of Trinity Church were 
taking in washing, I used to lay my way home 
to mid-day meal just to see the plucky workers 
hard at it, 

**They met at Mrs. Green's because she had 
no end of soft cistern water, plenty of yard; 
plenty of curtain stretchers^ too. Then she her- 
self had such a faculty for putting things 
through ! Out in her side-yard, or back behind 
the grape trellis, I'd see the women skirmishing 
with the tubs. 

** There was Mra Arnold who took mathe- 
matical honors at Cornell ; and washing was not 
included in her curriculum. Like as not she'd 
be standing before a tub sozzling and pounding 
with one of these suction punchers. A couple 
of others would be dashing the white things in 



116 CERTAIN WHO DWELT 

blue water, and another group chattering and 
laughing while they hooked the lace and thin 
stujff along stretcher-poles. 

• *And above would arch the Kansas sky, and 
below would roll Kansas blue grass, and in mid- 
air of elmrbranches robins would carol and jays 
scream, and wrens chatter from porch crannies, 
and perhaps you would catch sight of a rose- 
breasted grosbeak hiding in the shade. Lord! 
I used to say to myself as I passed by, could 
there be a prettier sight ! Or one more indica- 
tive of our race's active, bold, progressive self- 
respect! Or of our religion of helpfulness, 
holding together, protective defence of the 
group ! Or of our state's motto, * Work through 
trials and we shall reach the stars !' 

'*0f course the women woiu They always do 
win. They washed all the curtains in town, I 
guess. I don't know whether they washed all 
the curtains of neighboring towns, or not. I 
rather think they did. 

**And in the end they laughed right merrily 
at us men, who had lacked gumption to devise 
means to buy the carpet, or whatever it was, 
after we had voted the church must have it. 

**Then, too, thei women laughed at certain 
critics who, 'when they started out, laughed at 
them. But it was the gentle laughter of the 



IN LAUREL TOWN 117 

one who laughs best because he laughs right- 
eously and last.'' 

Other congregations, also, had their legends 
founded on folk characteristics. There was, for 
instance, the tale about Adoniram KeUner. You 
will probably agree with his workfellows that 
the most merciful, the final, judgment is that 
Adoniram meant better than he did. 

To say Adoniram KeUner is to call before 
your eyes Mary Louise, daughter of a whole- 
some mother who enjoyed an apron string forty 
inches long; and an equally plethoric father, a 
coal merchant with a bank-account as plethoric 
as himself and his amiable consort. 

A red-brick, broad-door dwelling, that also 
large in girth and smiling-eyed, in the midst of 
lawn, shrubs and graceful elms, formed the shell 
of their blessed home. 

The joy and sunshine of that home was a 
daughter, coddled and petted all her short life. 
By gentle askings, by loving mildness, ready 
obedience and duty to parents, Mary Louise had 
gained whatever ends her little mind chanced 
to seek. The family-life was as the angels' in 
heaven. 

In church work and the Sunday-school to 
which Mary Louise devoted her sweet effi- 
ciencies, was another laborer, a young man 



118 CERTAIIT WHO DWELT 

studying at the university — ^Adoniram KeUner 
himseK, built after an ample, well-fleshed, Teu- 
tonic model, features indefinitely cut and small 
eyes looking out from a rubescent complexion 
and thatch of reddish hair. 

Not a joy forever in looks, you say. But in 
devoutness, we answer, in what he termed devo- 
tion to the vineyard of the Lord he led every 
junior member. No one at the Sunday-school 
so always early and at hand ; to see chairs were 
in line, singing books in place, temperature at 
sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. No one else 
stayed so late. No other so apt at making Scrip- 
ture quotations in just the right place, at just 
the telling second. Any one with half an eye 
could see he was bent on doing the right thing. 

This mere gate-keeping in the vineyard, to 
use his phrase, at one time so lifted his spirit 
that he felt he had a call from On High. Yet, 
after completer examination of his heart in the 
privacy of his closet, he determined he could 
benefit a world waiting for energetic, efficient 
practicians, by giving himself to banking six 
days in the week, supplemented by teachings of 
a zealous faith whenever opportunity afforded. 

Therefore Adoniram dismissed thought of the 
ministry. Yet he frequented canvas tents into 
which evangelists, devoted to the awakening of 



IN LAUEEL T0V7N 119 

souls, gathered friends of summer evenings. At 
such meetings Adoniram's petitions excited out- 
spoken admiration. *^The sweet humility of 
them!^* the ladies said. **We give thanks/' ho 
cried one evening, ^^for this new and beautiful 
tent in which we meet — ahem — for this piano to 
lead us in joyous song — ahem — ^for these chairs 
— ahem — for this sawdust; we give thanks for 
this sawdust r' 

Adoniram had a rather striking voice; it 
sounded just as unbaked cake tastes ; that is, to 
the aural palate it had the savors of raw, sweet 
dough to the tongue. 

In his duty as general aide to the superintend- 
ent of the Sunday-school Adoniram gathered re- 
ports from teachers, and so it fell that he had 
)ften to go over to the corner where Mary Louise 
lisped stories of Noah's dove, and Moses in the 
bulrushes, and Elisha and his bears to a group 
of little girls. Out of her frills of lace, or furs, 
as weather might demand, Mary Louise's blue 
eyes would look up to Adoniram' s face, and 
smiles would play about her innocent mouth as 
she told what the children of her class were 
learning and giving. 

Now, if you have any fancy for reading the 
future without a crystal ball, and if you had 
seen the expression in Adoniram's eyes, and if 



120 CERTAIN WHO DWELT 

you had noticed Ms carriage toward thosQ pos- 
sessed of this world^s goods — for a pinch of 
Uriah Heep as well as a dash of Pecksniff had 
gone to the making of Adoniram; moreover, if 
you took into consideration Mary Louise^s proh- 
able, ultimate bank account, you could reason 
with moderate exactness that the young man 
would seek the lady^s hand in marriage. 

It all happened that away. Adoniram pro- 
posed the winter he was a college senior. Papa 
and Mama Huddleston considered his devout- 
ness, his irreproachable conduct wherever they 
had seen him, his clear, logical thinking, his 
very evident helpfulness. With results that the 
month that brought Adoniram's winning of a 
bachelor's degree, gave also to Adoniram that 
happiest circle of a man's life — his wedding 
day. 

One luscious June evening Mary Louise's 
Sunday-school associates gathered in the ample 
parlors of her home, full-lit and hung with 
roses, and then and there her pastor united her 
to the greatest hero within her horizon. 

Long before the wedding came, in planning 
the journey to follow their espousal, Adoniram 
had completely given Mary Louise her wilL 
"Just as you wish; whatever you like;" he had 
said; and so she determined they were to stay 



IN LAUBEL TOWN 121 

at her home till they should take flight the 
morning following the marriage. 

From this arrangement it fell that that night, 
after the wedding, Mary Louise stood with tooth- 
brush in hand and clad in little beruffled, belaced 
nightgown, when, after pacing half an hour in 
the shrubbery, Adoniram entered her room. 

In he walked calmly enough; just as if he 
were used to that chamber, into which he had 
merely peeped before when it had served as 
ladies' cloak-room for church societies — ^in he 
walked and pulled a chair to the middle of the 
room and sat down. 

**Come here, missy," he called to the smiling 
bride, signing with his right forefinger from her 
to himself, but without any other word or ac- 
tion, **Come here." 

Mary Louise came. 

**Now kneel down here at my knee," laying a 
hand over that articulation of his body, *'and 
say your prayers. .We'll begin as we expect to 
go on," he added. 

A malleable little soul, dutiful, unacquainted 
with rebellion in all her twenty protected years, 
never necessarily assertive of self — ^what did 
Mary Louise do? Through all her life she had 
done what those she trusted told her to do. 
Naturally she did that now. 



122 CEIIIAIN WHO DWELT 

She knelt, and covering her face with her 
hands resting against her bridegroom's knee, she 
prayed aloud — Adoniram improving her expres- 
sion as she went on. 

Next morning the couple stood waiting on the 
porch for the family-carriage to take them to 
the train. June sunlight, song of turtle-dove 
and thrush, fragrance of clustering roses had 
put last night's humiliation from the tender 
heart of Mary Louise, and her sweet face told 
how her mind was turned towards the journey. 

** Daughter darling," called her mother at the 
last moment, bustling forward with purse in 
hand, **when you are in New York you'll want 
to buy a few pretties;" and she handed Mary 
Louise a hundred dollar bill. 

Adoniram's ears heard the mother's cooing 
voice. His eyes saw the gift. 

That afternoon, when the train had nosed its 
way out of Kansas City and was leaping east- 
ward over the sunset-dyed lands of Missouri, 
he said to the trusting lady at his side, *^Hand 
that one hundred dollars to me, missy, I can 
take care of it." 

The wife undid her porte-monnaie and gave 
her husband the bill. 

Yet her spirits were not daunted. Such glori- 
ous days ahead! The great metropolis, its 



IN LAUKEL TOWN 123 

churches, its music, its hotels, its tens of 
thousands of people every waking hour! May- 
be Adoniram would take her to a theatre or 
two! 

The train sped on. Tzu-tzu-tzu it sang. 
Kickety-rick, rickety-rick, rickety-rick through 
many hours. And finally, in the calm of an 
evening, leaped alongside the waters of the 
Hudson till its monster eyes sighted the 
metropolis. 

Mary Louise now spoke of a hotel, the Fifth 
Avenue over on Twenty-third Street, where her 
mother told her they should put up. *^ Which 
way from the station did it lie V^ she wondered. 

**No," answered Adoniram, **we^ll take a fur- 
nished room.'' 

They walked about till they found one. 

For their comfort, in case of railway accident, 
Mary Louise's mother had packed food in a 
lunch basket. After they had eaten what the 
lady's generous hands stowed away, Adoniram 
replenished the store at grocers' counters. They 
picniced in the midst of enticing eating-houses. 

Still, their days were full of wonders and joys 
which an English poet, after his own nuptials, 
declared should belong to the '^treacle-moon.'^ 

At last time came for winging their way home- 
ward. Their journey ended in the dwelling 



124 CEKTAIN WHO DWELT 

Adoniram had chosen not far from the bank 
in his home-town, Minnehaha. 

Summer passed. 

Autumn's chill lay over the land. One eve- 
ning they had in a few friends, and the com- 
pany sat about the dining-table cracking nuts 
and telling stories. Finally the talk drifted to 
what would make each ** perfectly happy." One 
would start next week for a hunting trip in 
Australia. Another would buy an orange grove 
in Florida. A third would spend summers on 
his own yacht off the New England coast. 

Adoniram was silent. At last, upon appeal, 
he fell to telling his supreme choice: G-ranting 
at the outset an income that would free him from 
need of counting costs — ^then, broad, spacious 
rooms; a fireplace in which crackled logs; a 
piano for improvising, if he chose; carefully 
chosen books lining the walls, with now and then 
a Eaffael Morghen. 

So spoke Adoniram. 

**And me," added Mary Louise after a mo- 
ment's pause, looking towards her husband with 
a wistful smile. 

**No-o-o," answered Adoniram slowly, eyes 
narrowing as if balancing values, and voice 
taking a downward inflection, **Not necessarily 
you-u-u.'' 



!>?■ LAUREL. TOWN 125 

Winter pushed forward; and storms which 
held Adoniram at home even of daylight hours, 
and found him keeping on as he had started. 
Every night, after her day spent according to the 
meticulous direction of her spouse, Mary Louise 
knelt at his knee and said her prayer, which, 
before its flight to The Giver, Adoniram crit- 
icised and *^ bettered." 

Her face had lost the soft, laughing sweetness 
of her girlhood. Her smile seemed a ghost of 
habit. 

Still, no word of complaint escaped the littlo 
woman, or colored her letters to her old home. 
Save once, '*I had no idea what life was, mama 
darling," her sad heart at last dared to say. 
**Why, I didn't know I had always been carried 
about like a kitten in a basket on your dear 
arm." 

But springs do come in spite of the distortion 
of man, and when lilac bushes purpled at Minne- 
haha, and snow-ball trees whitened, Mary 
Louise's boy was bom. 

What a doting, delighted grandmother ! — ^who 
had declared a new milch cow should welcome 
that blessed baby; a grandmother who had em- 
ployed a dairyman to search the county and find 
the best. 

A few hours after the birth of her child Mary 



126 ceetaijST who dwelt 

Louise lay half asleep, shutting out the light 
by snuggling towards the wall, when her hus- 
band came to her bedside and asked a question. 

In her weakness the little woman only half- 
sensed his presence. But when he repeated, 
** Where did you put the cream from last night's 
milk!" seizing the tip of her nose between his 
right forefinger and thumb and turning her face 
towards himself, adding, **ril teach you to 
answer me, missy," he thoroughly roused her. 

Day by day after that, the nurse could get 
little cream for the invalid^s use ; it seemed as if 
someone took it off, or the new milch cow did 
not give normal milk. Moreover, wrote the 
nurse to the grandparents in Laurel Town — 
moreover, her patient suffered depression, had 
spells of silent weeping and showed no reaction 
to enjoyment. 

**What is the mystery!" queried the dame of 
the ample apron-string; and she took the train 
for Minnehaha. In that little borough she vi- 
brated between her daughter's bedside and the 
milk pans, dipping off the cream in precious 
spoonfuls, her mother-tenderness coaxing world- 
weary Mary Louise back to strength — till, at 
last, in the flood of early June beauty, just as 
Michigan creepers and Baltimore bells were 
again hanging out their clusters, she could bring 



IN LAUREL TOWN 127 

the poor ewe lamb, and her lambkin, to dwell in 
the broad-door, smiling-eyed home. 

Suit for separation and divorce Mary Lonise 
based on grounds of incompatibility of habits. 
The court listened to her testimony, granted her 
plea and gave her baby to her keeping. 

Adoniram went from one success to another. 
Still, time had its effect on him, too. Years 
after he spoke of the need of straightening dis- 
torted conceptions, and of humanizing old-time 
practices, if we would meet present-day prob- 
lems. 

VI. 

'*A notable occasion'' the newspapers of 
Laurel Town called the Honorable Robert Bor- 
row's birthday party. 

History was making, Kansas struggling for 
rights and look toward stateship, when Mr. Bor- 
row came from New Jersey. He served in the 
first Kansas senate and, *^a man of high char- 
acter and fine abilities," helped make Kansas a 
state; local papers said **a great state.'' 

And now serene old age, an easing sense of 
triumph at having left the tragedies of action 
behind, of a peace forerunning the ultimate 
sleep, blessed him. This cool, clear evening in 
October men who had shared with him the good 



128 CERTAIN WHO DWELT 

and ill of fortune were assembling at his bidding, 
each enjoying, also, harvests of long-yeared in- 
telligence and energy. For, in Laurel Town, 
what Pericles told his fellow citizens in Athens 
some twenty-three hundred and fifty years ago 
held true; **To avow poverty with us is no dis- 
grace ; the true disgrace is in doing nothing to 
avoid it.'' 

They came through the open doorway, these 
elderly men, and put their names, adding also 
their ages, in a guest-book at hand: W. S. Mc- 
Curdy, eighty-eight; Wm. Yates, eighty-two; 
Forest Savage, seventy-nine; C. L. Edwards, 
seventy-six ; C. A. Hanscom, seventy-four ; 0. E. 
Learnard, seventy-two; Ely Moore, seventy- 
three; George Banks, sixty-nine; George Gros- 
venor, seventy-five; R. G. Elliott, seventy- 
seven; Frank H. Snow, sixty-five; a complete 
list would be long. Colonel Learnard had been 
member of the first Territorial Council. Five 
of the guests were in Laurel Town the first win- 
ter Free-State men spent in Kansas. 

After the dinner, which had not forgotten the 
nectar best loved by Pomona, Douglas County 
cider — after the dinner, the company, retired 
to the spaciousness of the parlors, resting in 
easy chairs, called to your mind those grey- 
beards of one outstanding day that Homer 



IN LAUREL TOWN 129 

sings, *^ hoary elders, done with war but good 
at counselling in assembly, sitting rejoicing like 
grasshoppers on a tree down in the woods, and 
talking, but in a voice as slender as a lily." 

They had no repining, no lament at growing 
old, those old-young men — a gracious pride, 
rather, that they stored so many golden deeds 
in memory. And their eagerness in reviving 
minutest details of old-time joys, and now veiled 
sorrows, was heart-moving to see. To their 
vision every picture of their stirring early years 
stood suffused with its own brilliant colors. 
Recollections of later days might be dimming. 
But that past of theirs ! — robbed of every poig- 
nant pain they had felt in its moment, fear of 
defeat forgotten, hostilities overcome, rivalries 
of younger years given way to admiration for 
others' accomplishment; their past shown with 
refulgent glory. Involuntary impulse of Anglo- 
Saxons against display of sentiment alone kept 
them from what they might term "slopping 
over"; making the sentiment they voiced the 
sincerer. 

''The old boys were young again," Laurel 
Town papers reported of the meeting. * * Sharp 
wits undulled by age engaged in apt repartee. . . 
One incident recalled another, one story another, 
and laughter and song filled the hours." 



130 CEKTAIN WHO DWELT 

** Eastern people and papers jest about Kan- 
sas/' cried one white-head, **they say we are 
erratic, impulsive, even that we are insane. Pd 
rather be insane in Kansas than sane where there 
isn't an idea afloat but money-getting and 
money-spending. I take notice there are some- 
things they don't say about Kansas. They don't 
say we haven't convictions. They don't say we 
don't act what we think. In those early days of 
Kansas we fought for human liberty, and to-day, 
and, I believe, for all days, we'll fight on the 
same line. 

**My experience when I went down into Per- 
simmon County is fair example of those boom- 
ing old times. No state in the Union had had so 
phenomenal a growth. No wheat fields had 
yielded such harvests. No com lands had ever 
run miles on miles together over a fat loam. 

** Streams of wagons, caravan after caravan, 
came over the hills. Their folks would camp 
by a likely stream. Straightway a town was 
there. And before the nearby field of oats could 
turn its heads from green to yellow, the town 
would be a city. 

**But its rival would spring up a few miles 
away. Then the politicians of the two settle- 
ments would battle to make their town the 
county seat. 



IN LAUBEL TOWN 131 

**Soon the healthy young county-seat would 
want a railway. Not many days, and along 
would meander some promoter, like Isaac L. 
Monash. You've all heard of Isaac L. I knew 
him. Oh, he was not the only pebble on the 
beach in those times ! 

**Grip in hand Isaac stepped off the train, 
climbed into the bus for the Central House, and 
registered there. Then he called on the editor 
of the city's daily. Over in Wall Street Abra- 
ham and Emanuel Shekels were wanting to build 
a railroad. In his pocket Isaac had printed slips 
telling about Abraham, living in New York; 
and Emanuel, the younger, head of the London 
house, who had married an English wife and got 
himself a knighthood and was known as Sir 
Emanuel. Isaac L. had come west representing 
the Shekelses, to find out a way for a new rail- 
road — a clean cut to Texas cattle-plains and the 
Eockies. 

*^Now, if the Shekelses and Isaac L. built that 
road it would be a road to brag about, an A. 
number one — not the road alone, but all its roll- 
ing stock, its total management from the first 
furrow for its grading to its daily cannon-ball 
express. It would cross the Neosho and the 
Verdigris. It would travel the limitless lengths 
of the Arkansas. It would pierce the mountains 



132 CEBTAIN WHO DWELT 

of Colorado, bring the metal of the mines to our 
furnaces and farmers, and take back fruits of 
their labors to folks living on the whole east 
side of the Rockies. 

**Did we people want that road? Isaac L. 
asked through the editor of the city's daily. 

**Want the road? Folks were mad for it. 
They could hardly wait for Isaac L. to tell them 
what to do. 

^*So, just like the orientals in books we read 
when we were kids, Isaac L. clapped his hands, 
so to speak, and a gang of husky Irish lads came 
over the hills lugging chain and transit. And 
every farm-owner in the neighborhood went 
about bidding for a chance to entertain those 
road-makers. 

**By the way, the law broke on me then, for 
the first time, that it is the Jew who employs 
the Irish, not the Irish who employ the Jew. 
One day I asked a soncie woman why all their 
clannish hanging together. 

* * * Sor,' she returned, true to the Irish instinct 
for putting a question in answer, *And haven't 
the pair of us the two oldest religions in the 
world! Is it asleep ye are?' 

'*Well, down there in Persimmon County, 
after the Irish boys had measured the land, 
people met to vote the bonds. How it happened 



IN LAUREL TOWN 133 

I never could see. Strangely enough the town- 
ship voting the biggest aid in bonds was found 
to offer the only available route for the road! 
County donations and perpetual exemption from 
taxes followed. Land-owners claimed the priv- 
ilege of themselves giving the right of way. 

*^Then they turned out with their teams, and 
ploughs, and scrapers, and hired men, and put 
bed-making through, carrying on the grade more 
than a mile a day. 

**Ah, those were jubilee times! Farmers with 
timber cut down their noble old trees and turned 
beams for bridges from the sawmills. Free- 
Soilers whose life had been a total self-denial, 
who had fought border-rujB&ans and even taken 
a turn with John Brown ; and after the war was 
over had got as fat as sculpins on hopes deferred 
— rugged old fellows who had conscientiously 
followed Socrates' advice to a disciple to ^bor- 
row money of himself by diminishing his wants' 
— hearts-of-oak, blessed with Anglo-Saxon 
sense of courtesy, blessed with their inborn, in- 
expugnable conviction of the worth and dignity 
of even the humblest, said *Yes, sir,Ho Isaac 
L. ; and when they went in-doors took off their 
hats to him. Think of it ! Shades of our grand- 
fathers and their Revolution ! — Isaac L. and his 
whole blamed outfit not more than a generation 



134 CEKTAIN WHO DWELT 

out of a me aching, Vilna ghetto, beggars ahorse- 
back, and destitute of that idea of civil liberty 
which was the very breath of our old warriors' 
nostrils; liberty for which their blood had up- 
built this country. 

*^So far Isaac L. had not paid a dollar for his 
board at the Central House. He was all things 
to all men, and he had the best the town afforded. 
He even hobnobbed with the county-treasurer, 
and secured an advance in cash pending collec- 
tion of taxes. 

'* Finally, one morning, the bonds came down, 
all printed at Topeka and signed by the proper 
officials. They were placed in an iron-bound 
safe which Ikey called a vault. Not a bond, 
according to conditions, should be surrendered 
to the railroad company, till the road was ready 
for the ties. Half the funds should then be ad- 
vanced, and the rest the day the first train 
ran over the track. 

*^So our folks worked away at the grading, 
and got it done to the banks of the Wahoo. Then 
Isaac L. received half the issue of the bonds. 
He solemnly executed a formal receipt; and 
started east for the iron. 

**He never came back. Springs came back,, 
and crimson stars of the prairie-verbena studded 
the raw embanlnnent. Falls came back and dry 



IN LAUEEL TOWN 135 

September winds swayed sunflowers over the 
rotting oak sleepers. 

^'I used to feel kind o' sorry for the ilk of 
Isaac L. But after years of observation on this 
little pippin of ours, I conclude I am sorry for 
the other fellow. Tell the truth, I say, without 
prejudice and without fear. 

*'Our people were, and are imaginers, dream- 
ers about an ideal, minds bent on the general 
end, selfish with the statebuilders' selfishness. 
Isaac L., on the other hand, had two almost un- 
failing characteristics of his blood; what Marx 
calls its commercialism — a shallow, puny prac- 
ticality, and rapaciousness always for his nub- 
bin, unsocialized self; *0 my ducats! O my 
daughter!' never other peoples' ducats! 
other peoples' daughters !" 

Tales less stem came forward as the evening 
wore on. 

**You speak of the growth of churches in 
Laurel Town within the last forty years," said 
one of the hoary boys, laughing. ^ ^Do you recall 
how a couple of students locked in a congrega- 
tion ? No ? Never heard of it ! Well ! 

'*One Sunday night, early in a September, 
Ned Stetson and Jim Galway went strolling 
down Kentucky Street. The fall term of the 
university had not yet opened and buckled the 



136 CEETAIN WHO DWELT 

lads down to work. That's the same as saying 
a little grinding hadn't taken the devil out of 
their summer-plethora hides. They were too 
good-natured to live; in the mood of over-fed, 
under-exercised puppies, full of the pointless 
rage for action that, when four-footed, chews 
up rugs and gnaws off dictionary bindings. 

^^ We're all of us puppies, I've been a-noticing 
these last seventy years ; or more likely calves 
that God has tethered out in this orchard of the 
earth — not exactly orchard, either, for some of 
us are staked on bleak hillsides, and others in 
warm sunny valleys. But whatever our fortune 
in this world, each of us sometime in life is apt 
to wind himself in his rope and splash himself 
in a puddle. 

*^ Those two boys came near doing it that eve- 
ning. It was a little after nine when, in their 
meanderings, they reached an African church; 
the very moment the parson was giving out the 
last hymn. Doors stood wide open, for the 
weather was hot as Tophet. 

^^The two students, or calves, stopped on the 
sidewalk and peered in upon the congregated 
negroes. As they looked, they saw a large key 
in the outer side of the double-leaf doors; the 
only doors of the building, by the bye. 

'*With every soul in the church that moment 



IN LAUEEL TOWN 137 

intent on the singing, no one saw those doors 
swing to ; nor heard the lock click ; nor the draw- 
ing out of the key and the laying it on the outer 
sill. 

** Satan having prompted the cubs so far, his 
majesty then led them to cross the street and 
seat themselves in the shadow of a hedge to see 
what would happen. 

*^The hymn was long, the singers' enjoyment 
of it intense, and their velvet voices went 
through every line and verse. Then the congre- 
gation turned to go. 

**One brother, amazed to find the doors shut, 
grabbed the knob and turned it. Without re- 
sult. 

** Another, thinking the first incompetent, im- 
patiently seized the handle and shook the door 
till hinges and lintels rattled. 

** * Strange dat do oh shet dis hot night!' 

* ^ Other worshippers crowded about and tried 
their strength. 

* * * Open dat dooh !' they yelled. 
**But no answer came. 

** *Dat dooh is shuh done locked!' 

*' Other efforts to force the opening brought 

the same judgment. 
*' * Gimme a chair, Elder Johnson,' cried one 

of the men after a few minutes of reflection, 



138 CEKTAIN WHO DWELT 

^ gimme a chair or two an I'll set em on de 
groun, an we can holp de ladies outer de 
windows/ 

**No other plan seemed feasible^ and the 
brethren fell to working out this one. Two or 
three climbed on the sills and jumped to the 
grass beneath. Inside others were soon busy 
boosting to window ledges, and passing down on 
the outer wall the giggling, or squealing, but al- 
ways ^ indiginant,' sisters. 

** Meanwhile, across the street sat two young 
Satanites, peering through the branches of a 
hedge, holding their congested sides and rock- 
ing to and fro in soundless laughter. 

^* Before all the congregation emerged win- 
dow-wise, however, one of the elders on outside 
duty had, by dint of striking matches and exam- 
ining doorway, found the key, and the tag-end 
of the congregation passed out as usual." 

*^That Jim Galway you tell of," broke in a 
Laurel Town character, '* isn't he the one who 
went over to London!" 

** Somebody asked his nationality the other 
day, said he was a Hebrew," answered the well- 
read man. '*He used, when a lad loitering 
through our streets, to remind me of what Dr. 
Johnson told about a man of his century; *It 
was said by himself that he owed his nativity to 



IN LAUKEL TOWN 139 

England, Kuf by everybody else, that be was 
bom in Ireland/ " 

* *I'd like to know bow Jim came to cut a swatb 
in London literary fields — editor, and so on. I 
thougbt solidity a necessity over tbere." 

**0b, Jim's able," put in tbe well-read man. 

** Everlasting bigbbrow ! Can't you see a plain 
American's point? I tbougbt a man, to bold a 
post wielding power in literary matters in Lon- 
don, bad to bave stability, veracity, moral re- 
sponsibility, etbical sense — ^wbat you call char- 
acter. We're more fluid over bere and slosb- 
abouts get more protracted bearing. But over 
tbere! Jim interpreting tbis country to con- 
servative Englisbmen ! Geewbilikins ! Wbat pre- 
tence! He says be * secured control' of a paper, 
rbat paper's name became a by-word, a synonym 
for batred of America. No little ill-will sprang 
in England from its sordid misrepresentations 
of our people and our institutions." 

'*0b, yes," returned tbe well-read man, an 
austere smile brigbtening bis face, **but Jim's 
a cbild. Every Irisbman of tbe exuberant sort 
is a cbild." 

*' Treat bim as you treat a cbild, tben. Don't 
spoil tbe cbild by sparing tbe rod." 

** Unabated Irishmen suffer from lack of sense 
of tbe golden mean," tbe well-read man went on. 



140 CERTAIN WHO DWELT 

**Maiiy we get over here have been abated by 
various pressures. Jim wasn't. Hybris got hold 
of him early in life. The unabated knows no 
awe before the everlasting moralities ; embodies 
the old Greek hybris, insolent assumption, law- 
less disregard of the rights of others." 

**I don't know anything about your Greek, 
but I do know that wanting to appear cheek by 
jowl with riches and rank, chasing after the ad- 
vertised, sneering at the retiring, with anarch- 
ists an anarchist, with socialists a socialist, hat- 
ing order except to exploit it for his own fur- 
therance, ever of the off-side ; in short a natural- 
bom incendiary, intoxicated with egotism — 
that's Jim. With microscope and scalpel he dis- 
sects the by-sayings and by-doings of gifted 
people ; then, after dislocating their speech and 
action, sets himself before the reader as the 
* smart Alec' of the occasion." 

**Portrayers of men of extraordinary accom- 
plishments," put in the well-read man, **seem 
sometimes set on coloring their picture, be the 
cost to truth what it may. Airs of superiority 
and patronage their writings at times assume 
are nauseating; parvenu, too." 

*'0h, Jim's a whole heap of a rhetorical pad- 
dy," burst in the persistent old boy, **even if he 
does advertise himself like the dickens and do 



IN LAUREL TOWN 141 

other Hebraic stunts. Over in England, when 
he tried to stand for Parliament, he must have 
claimed entry to the try out on the ground that 
he was an Englishman ; voted as an Englishman. 
Who knows but someday hell declare he is an 
American! That would be the acme of brass! 
Well, our government has spread wings of pro- 
tection over refuse of Europe and got kicks in 
return for kindness before now. 

**Why, the other day, down in Kansas City, I 
heard that little runt, Sol Einstein who made his 
pile in wheat-deals — I heard little Sol snarl, *I 
have no respect for your country, or your flag. 
I didn't want to come here.' Damn such a 
parasite! Who cares for his * respect!' Not 
our blood that made this country what it is, and 
works all the time to make it better. These 
United States suit us real Americans pretty 
well, I notice, in spite of the vilifications of all 
the psychically-twisted immigrants who seek our 
advantages and repay our generosity by mud- 
slinging — Sol Einsteins and Jim Galways.'' 

**0h, what does it signify anyway?" called 
one of the company crabbedly, knocking ashes 
off his cigar and cocking his eye at a chandelier, 
**If men do halloo your name, and crowd to 
listen to your speech ! What does it all amount 
to! 



142 CERTAIN WHO DWELT 



n 



Does it mean that you are more fitted to 
teach than another whom they don^t crowd to, 
whom they don't applaud? No. Many are the 
ill-fitted fools I've seen run after here in Kan- 
sas, just because the fool advertised himself, 
blew his own horn, pushed on with subterfuges, 
while men better equipped were passed by and 
forgotten. Of all this humbug-loving world this 
Kansas of ours is greatest for chasing after 
blatant mouthers and persistent posers ; after a 
hero not worth a hill of beans ; some fellow who 
moles along always intent on his own advantage, 
till the nothing that has always been in him 
finally oozes out. 

**But supposing you have an idea, and sup- 
posing you are a better word-carpenter than the 
next fellow, more competent to set forth our 
current interests, is it worth the effort? Isn't 
it better to chew the cud of contemplation with 
one's cows in cloisters of the country? 

'•The Bird of Time lias but a little way 
To flutter— and the Bird is on the Wing.' 

** Nerve-ache ! You know how it pierces your 
body; down your spinal cord and to your very 
finger-tips! Staring, sleepless nights! Anxious 
days ! And all for what ? Our Kaw over there 
goes on carrying down its mud. Waters of the 
Great Salt Lake are just as heavy with sodium. 



IN LAUREL TOWN 143 

Why all this fuss and strutting? Telescopes 
show us suns without end ; and microscopes de- 
clare that trees grow on our finger-nails. 
**Why all this strutting, I say; 

'The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop, 
'Tlie Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.* 

*^ Better be like the robins. No dyspepsia for 
them; no palsy; no heart-disease. Life with 
them is joy; they do what they want to do, 
whether in clear aether above, or fertile fields 
and forests below." 

'^Your naming robins," smilingly broke in our 
naturalist, Professor Snow, ** brings up a story 
I know, and since it is antidotal to the philos- 
ophy of this pessimist here," nodding at the last 
speaker, **I'll tell you of a robin, We're talking 
to-night about Kansas folks. Laurel Town folks, 
and if robins aren't folks, who is? 

**Did you ever think what a democrat the 
Eobin is I Have you noticed how he walks the 
earth? What solidity and security of gait! 
What serenity! What dignity from sense of 
membership in a community where the snob does 
not exist ! — where the word classes is in minds 
and mouths only of those so unfortunate as to 
be underbred ! — where no other social order than 
his own supervenes! Self-contentment gives 
him a breast projection that would put to blush 



144 CEKTAIN WHO DWELT 

a chesty West Pointer gala-marching down 
Fifth Avenue. 

' ^ The Robin, too, has a big capacity for tend- 
ing to his own business; seeing it successfully 
through, and not minding other people's. He 
grubs his living from Mother Earth. To be a 
good provider and look well after the ways of 
his household, he is up and off early in the morn- 
ing. In this he is a true son of American soil, 
a thorough democrat. 

**When twilight settles over the land you see 
him still hustling, for, after the habit of Ameri- 
cans, he likes a sustaining supper. His children 
grow like Kansas weeds, and his wife is as com- 
petent a mother and house-wife as her husband 
in his providing. 

**As for his voice — a whole folk-song lies in 
his warble. If you think Pm overestimating 
call to mind how, in early springtime, your spirit 
rises when his first note starts upon your ear; 
how your heart lightens when his melody waves 
along a May air laden with the scent of apple- 
blossoms. Not only is it as if you heard songs 
your mother sang as you lay in your cradle ; its 
echoes seem to trail further back and rouse sub- 
conscious, race memories. 

**Then Robins have another American charac- 
teristic. Last spring, over by Green Hall, I saw 



IN LAUEEL TOWN 145 

a lusty member of the tribe walking sedately on 
the grass. Suddenly eagerness struck him. His 
eye fastened on a bit of tissue paper about four 
by six inches. He ran to it, picked it in his 
beak, and rose to the overhanging tree. 

** Toward the end of the long pliant bough on 
which he lighted was a small crotch, and in it 
he began packing the tissue. Gentle winds blew 
against him, and he had worked but a couple of 
minutes when a whirl of air caught the paper 
and bore it away. 

*'0nly for a second, however. Down he 
darted, and, about ten feet below his building 
site, caught the floating piece, took it back, and 
again began packing in his foundation. 

**Not long and another gust caught the sheet, 
that part he could not grasp formed a sail for the 
wind to seize, and a second time bore it still 
farther before he nipped it in his bill. Again he 
rose to the crotch and began hammering it down. 

*'A third time the wind played thief. A fourth 
— the bird trying to pack the paper, some mis- 
chievous harpy snatching it from under his beak 
and bearing it off. 

'* Class-time neared, and I had to go. I 
thought of Rlobert Bruce and his spider. With 
draughty winds I feared for Mr. Robin's house- 
raising. 



146 CEKTAIN WHO DWELT 

^^A few days after I went round to see what 
headway so good an American had made, and if 
by chance Mrs. Robin had had her infare. 

**In a notch of the limb lay a nest; and from 
one side gleamed smutty tissue-paper. Mrs. 
Robin's cap glanced in the sunlight; and the 
dame herself seemed brooding and drowsing in 
peace. 

'• * Just start in to sing as you tacMe the tiling 
That can not be done, and you'll do it/ 

I said to myself. Do as Mr. Robin did. 

**We talk about an emblem of our country — 
and the Robin at our door! A thrush migrant; 
as our people are. Yet of supremely social in- 
stinct — like our people. Loving his own peculiar, 
self -built home — as our people do ; but wanting 
that home by the abode and groupings of men." 

**I know a story of another bird of supremely 
social instinct/' called another of the company, 
*'It concerns some of our town-folks, too." 

'*Tell it," invited the assembly. 

'*My story is about the little stone house be- 
low the university. Nowadays winds blow 
through that house's shattered windows. Yet 
there a lady once met a bird — a big, brilliant- 
plumed, gawky, Shanghai rooster; eager, im- 
pudent, earth-scratching, always searching 



IN LAUKEL TOWN 147 

something to put in his maw, and totally devoid 
of reverence for people of distinction. 

* * The lady, a dignified spinster, almost if not 
quite six feet in height, broad-shouldered, doing 
all she did in what Miss Oliver has described as 
*the grand manner^ — a lady the very epitome 
of mid- Victorian propriety and formalism. In 
after times she held the chair of French in the 
university, an institution not founded on the day 
of her encounter with the Shanghai. 

** Fifty years or so ago Dr. Charles Eobinson 
lived in the little stone house. Perhaps he built 
it. Who knows? 

** Anyhow, at that time, and, as you may easily 
discover, summer-time, the formal, mid- Victo- 
rian spinster, doing everything in her matchless 
way, this lady was the guest of her friend, Mrs. 
Robinson. 

**The two dames lived each day under some- 
what pioneering conditions — as who did not in 
Kansas in the eighteen fifties? Such a little 
stone house was a cramped affair to those used 
to the acreage and sweep of a New England 
dwelling. But there was all-out-doors — and who 
can deny the breadth of out-of-doors in Kansas ? 
So the two New England ladies thought of out- 
of-doors when within-doors seemed a trifle 
narrow. 



148 CERTAIN WHO DWELT 

*^To these two intimates, and the little stone 
house, Dr. Eobinson brought home, one day for 
mid-day dinner, a friend passing through town. 
And quite f orehandedly he brought a beefsteak. 
Those days distances to butchers were long, and 
meat not easy to come by. Then, why shouldn't 
the mayor of Laurel Town and coming gover- 
nor of the democratic state of Kansas bring 
home his own steak, in his own right hand, if he 
wanted to? 

*^ According to plan and division of household 
duties the two ladies had hit upon, dinner-get- 
ting that day was to fall to the tall, mid- Victo- 
rian dame. Then, of course, the cooking of the 
steak would be hers also. 

**Now right here you get at the reason why I 
said I could tell a tale about a bird. 

' * The lady, beginning her task, laid the steak 
on the table by the open window ; near the win- 
dow-sill that comes almost on a level with the 
slooping ground, as you may easily see the next 
time you go by and peer into the dilapidated 
little stone house. 

**Next the lady turned to get coals ready for 
the broiling. For a time she gave all her atten- 
tion to the fire. Then, when she had it nicely 
coaled, she reached for the steak — ^jnst in time to 
see Mr. Shanghai on a dead run up the hill, hold- 



IN LAUREL TOWN 149 

ing his head far above its usual height in order 
to save himself from turning heels over head in 
making off with the meat, 

* ^Parbleu ! What would a lady, dignified, some- 
what slow in movement, but blessed with the 
New England conscience — what would such a 
lady, in such an extremity, do! Dinner would 
be lost without the steak. Those were hungry 
men. 

**The lady would give chase. Being from New 
England she would not call for help. She would 
rely on her own breathing and running ability. 
Precisely this Miss Elizabeth Leonard did. 

**The fowl went up the hill. The lady after 
him. Then a vacillating mind led him down the 
hill. The lady followed. But before h^ had ar- 
rived quite at the bottom, he thought he Would 
again ascend. The lady pursued his divagations. 

''Till, finally, after a few more of the ups and 
downs of life, possibly feeling in his moral 
make-up that he was really the one at fault, Mr. 
Shanghai seemingly became discouraged. At 
any rate he dropped the steak. 

''When the lady got back to the table, the win- 
dow and the fire, there was still a bed of blazing 
coals, and, after sousing the meat in water, she 
spread it on a gridiron, and at last set it hot, 
juicy and redolent, before the hungry; flanking 



150 CEETAIN WHO DWELT 

it with ivory cobs obtruding milky kernels, pota- 
toes taken that morning from between grey 
blankets of earth, and other goodies such as 
women in Kansas do set forth. 

** *And they did eat their meat, just as in 
older times when Luke, workfellow and physi- 
cian of Paul, told of others leading a simple life, 
yet a life carrying a message to the world — ^they 
'did eat their meat with gladness and single- 
ness of heart.' 

**But the story of her encounter with the 
rooster the lady did not relate till the dinner was 
over/' 

** While Professor Snow was talking of his 
Simon-pure American," broke in the smiling- 
faced insurance-man, ^*and our old Tory Squire 
here,'' laying his hand on the arm of the pessi- 
mist, ** telling of his clear aether, I could not help 
thinking of how I met Bud Hightower. But Bud 
didn't live in Laurel Town, and so he's prob- 
ably taboo here to-night. Mighty little of Kan- 
sas in Bud, He lived just across the line in 
Missouri." 

'* Before you strike in on Missouri," faltered 
one of the elder of the guard, *^ let's have a real 
Kansas song. Let's have the 'Com Song;' a 
good old sing for all corn-raising folks." 

''Say," chortled the well-read man, his native 



IIT LAUREL TOWN 151 

austerity melting into a laughing eye, **you re- 
mind me of a little story about Napoleon. * They 
don't speak well of my Arc de Triomphe/ he 
complained one day. * There are two persons I 
have heard praise it,' answered Antoine Daru, 
'your majesty and its architect.' " 

*^Well, now, old top, busy as a bee and about 
as touchy! *^You can n't say the *Oom Song' 
hasn't Kansas color. You can n't say it doesn't 
bring a Kansas cornfield of a dewy June morn- 
ing before your eyes. To your ears, too, the 
click of a young darkey's hoe as he sings among 
the whispering blades. 

'*You can n't say *Com Song' would n't 
sound good after those war songs we've been 
singing, heartening as their memories are. I'm 
not a doddering old fussbudget, and don't you 
forget it. 

''Start the 'Com Song,' James Horton; 
wont you ? You're leader of this glee club. And 
you basses come on." 



Corn Song 




hoe-in in <Je rows of de corn 



De CutWonncoineAnd he eatdatcorn,Da 
jni> motto e tempre crttc. ^ 




Hopper^rasscomeandhe gnawdittcom,De BlctckSmutcomeand he spoil ilatcomiSorse 




152 



dttitgt tfhr 



6o«>ift_ M fir* io d« aom • in I'se ho«-in _ — hc»«ia 




tofOf graduoBy intmanng 



lioe*ta m dft>rows (rf tfo com. Mas-tar SunshimsmSe he wjQ grow daUcora, Mam 




153 



pradveUy fatter 




Ole -Miss Moo n fai Sep-tem-ber is ,ftfl) And Ise got- my nx)n«ey in Toy 
animato 




mg'esHeaUtf and with eti^hatis 




pbctcet forJ6chool>Mas-ter Jack FroEt comewitb tus sbaip hard nitei And de 




154 



IN LAUKEL TOWN 155 

* ' Now for Bud Hightower/^ cnonised the com- 
pany sinking back in relaxation after their sing- 
ing, ^*We want Bud Hightovfer. Fetching 
name !" 

*^rve seen Missourians who shut car- windows 
when the train neared Kansas/' quavered one of 
the cronies. ^^They said they * didn't want any 
air from the damned Yankees to get in.' Was 
Bud that sort r 

The insurance-man smiled the query to si- 
lence, and began : — 

^*I met him on the road, in a park nature 
made and civilization had not yet reduced to 
utility and com. Eye-measuring room for me 
to pass, and slowing his team, he called 
^ Howdy!' 

**I had just pedaled up a hill and was not 
averse to stopping. 

*^ * Ain't you that there inshoorance-man what 
was down to Burning Bush t'morrer a week?' 

^*He sat on a board laid across his wagon- 
box. An old, white sombrero, turned up in front 
and sagging behind, formed a nimbus about his 
head. Blue hickory shirt and butternut- jean 
trousers covered his raw-boned body. 

**Six days before I was in Burning Bush, I 
answered; I didn't know whether I was the in- 
surance-man he meant. 



156 CERTAIN WHO DWELT 

^* *Wall, ain't you ther feller what writ some 
life inshoorance fur Tom Linn thar at the 
bank!' 

** *Wall, stranger/ he continued, putting his 
worn plough shoes on the upright board, lean- 
ing towards them and shutting his body like a 
jackknife, ^Pve bin er wanting ter see you-all 
ever sence that day. Ther fact is I was settin 
on er box, er whittlin and er dreamin just out- 
side ther window from Tom's desk, when you 
wuz er preachin ter him — an I want to say right 
hyer that yer done it powerful strong, too; an 
what you-all wuz er sayin hez set me ter think- 
in right smart f 

** ^Now I live down hyer in Buck Crick er- 
bout four mile, an it's this erway. We-uns has 
got er forty acre patch that ain't so powerful 
bad, ceptin one corner what's a bit rocky. Er 
piecin uv it out with twenty what we rent from 
Squire Haldeman, me and Sabiny manages ter 
git emough com bread and long sweetnin fer 
ther young ones. 

*^ 'How many? yer say — 

** 'Wall,' in lower voice, 'ther ain't but two 
now. Ther dipthery took ther twin babies last 
winter's a year ago, and ther oldest boy he got 
drowned in ther crick last summer' — and then 



IN LAUKEL TOWN 157 

the blue faded out of the goodman^s eyes and a 
misty whiteness overspread them. 

** *Yes, stranger, it were tolable hard on ther 
woman but I reckon ther Lord knows best ; least- 
wise that's what ther preacher wuz er tellin us. 

** ^Yes, we've got er boy and gal left, and 
they're powerful good children, too. I'm pretty 
peart myself; but mam, she's been ailin and er 
punyin considerable, and it's been er worryin uv 
me heaps. Sence ther children were took she 
don't seem ter have no ambition, not anything 
that erway. She ain't complainin none; ain't 
doctorin none; jest kind er pinin. I lowed I'd 
send her back ter her mother's in Callaway 
soon's corn's laid by, ter see ef 'twont help her 
out. 

** *But that ain't altogether what's er worryin 
nv me. It's this : — ^With me er workin ther place, 
and what I kin tend besides, and er doin odd 
jobs when I kin git em, we ain't layin by much. 
An that ther boy uv ours is goin to be growed up 
soon, if we raise him, an I've lowed as how he'll 
have ter go ter school right smart, fur he's er 
goin ter have an edication, even ef his dad ain't 
got none. 

" *Now, stranger, suppose I should be tuk off! 
Why, after I heerd you-all er talkin ter Tom 
t'other day, I went to bed that night and got ter 



158 CERTAIN WHO DWELT 

think erabout this hyer dyin, and I couldn't sleep 
no moreen a rabbit. An ever sence it's been er 
worryin nv me, an I jest made up my mind Td 
hunt you-uns up and see what you could do 
f er me. 

a ^ We're middlin poor, an I don't know ef we 
can pay out all ther money it'll take, but I jest 
'lowed what er rich man needs bad, er poor man 
needs a powerful sight worse. When craps is 
good, and cattle and hogs is high, we do tolable 
well, specially when mam has luck with the but- 
ter and aigs and turkeys. 

*^ ^TThat might be yer charges fur er thousand 
dollars inshoorance? 

'* ^Wall, I were thirty-nine month before 
last. 

'' ^Most forty dollars er year! That's a heap 
uv money. Why, ef I should take that much er 
year and buy calves, I'd soon have er thousand 
dollars — 

^ ' Ef I didn't die, and the calves didn't die, and 
ef I kep er doin uv it, yer say. Wall, yes, ther 
air chances, I reckon. 

'' ^What's that? Ef I live twenty years I'll 
git my money back anyhow, or won't have more 
to pay! 

** * Stranger, I'll tell yer what I want ter do. 
I want ter talk this hyer over with Sabiny and 



IN LAUKKL TOWN 159 

see what slie says. And I'd like ter know whar 
I kin find yer ter-morrer.* 

**I told him he'd better close the deal then and 
there. 

** *No, stranger/ he said, *I wont do er thing 
till I see mam. It wouldn't be right. She 
wouldn't spend all that money without askin uv 
me, and tain't right fur me ter do it unbeknownst 
ter her. She helps ter earn this hyer money, an 
I'll have to see her.' 

^*I answered I should be in Burning Bush to- 
morrow, and on my way back would stop at his 
house to learn their decision. 

**As I rode away I could not help wondering 
why the Lord had seemingly put so many hearts 
in the wrong place. Here was one that should 
have worn ermine, and over it was nothing but a 
Missouri cotton shirt. 

*^Next day, with the sun still three hours high, 
I rounded the divide that looked into Sabiny's 
vale. Century-old oaks capped the hills and 
stood down to fields green with com and yelloAV 
with ripening wheat. To the right, through the 
wood-pasture, nestled the couple's domicile. I 
got off my wheel and walked. 

'*But no sooner had I turned the comer of 
the hog-lot than out rushed a pack of hounds and 
coon dogs, reinforced by the two canines that had 



160 CEETAIN WHO DWELT 

flopped under Bud's wagon when it came to a 
standstill the day before. 

**Eyes gleamed, and hair turned the wrong 
way, and it looked as if the brutes were to have 
a lunch at their own counter — when the door 
flew open and out came Madam, humble in her 
shame that a stranger should receive such a 
welcome at the house of a bom Missourian. 

*'She wielded her broom vigorously, and 
talked as emphatically as she struck out. The 
curs smothered their growls and fled for refuge, 
one under an ash-barrel, another round the 
corner of the meat-house, a third peered over 
chicken-coops and others from behind the cur- 
rant bushes. 

**I was saved. To confront Sabiny! 'Holy 
smoke,' I thought, 'is this the she those honest 
eyes look upon with such affection!' Hair thin 
and lustreless, black and nervous beads of eyes, 
complection in hue like a pumpkin, topping a 
lank, stoop-shouldered figure close to six feet 
in height. You would not call Sabina beautiful. 

''I thanked the lady for her defense, adding 
that dogs seldom attacked me and I wondered 
why theirs did. 

** 'It's jest Bud's way o keepin them hounds,' 
she answered. *He will hunt coons and foxes, 
and them hounds has to be kep up till they git 



IN I^UEEL TOWN 161 

SO oncivilized they purty nigh worries the life 
out uv me/ 

^*I enquired for the goodman. 

** ^I reckon you'll find him down to the branch 
fixin o the water gap,' she answered, and asked 
as I walked away, * Air you that inshoorance-man 
what Bud were a-tellin about V 

** *Yes,' I said and braced myself for an on- 
slaught. 

< * * For goodness' sake ! Now, why didn't you 
tell me? Wait till I git a cheer, and you set 
down here in the gallery while I call Bud.' 

'^In the yard stood a tall pole, topped by a 
bell swinging in an iron frame. From the lever 
arm of the frame hung a rope which she grasped 
and pulled till the bell rang. 

^*The log-house was typical — two separate 
rooms about ten feet apart set in a grove of 
honey-locusts. One roof covered both rooms 
and the passage between them ; then, without 
change of pitch, reaching down to a row of posts, 
sheltered a porch or gallery. The shingles had 
been hand-riven and shaven, logs and posts of 
the house squared by a broad axe, and floors of 
rooms and gallery made of oak puncheons. 

'* A great iron kettle in which Sabina tried out 
lard at hog-killing time lay bottom-side up 
against the house-logs, in one comer of the 



162 CERTAIN WHO DWELT 

gallery. Not far o:ff, on a peg, hung her side- 
saddle and riding skirt. Spinning-wheel and 
sewing-machine stood inside near a window. 

*^And everywhere pecked chickens, old 
chickens, young chickens of all degrees of famil- 
iarity. Sabiny with a swish of her broom drove 
the intruders away. Then bringing another 
chair she sat down beside me. 

* ' * Bud was a-tellin about that inshoorance of 
yours,' she began, *but we ain't come to no con- 
clusions about it. You see, if Bud should die, 
and you-all should come yere and bring that 
money, I'd sort o feel as if I were takin it for 
Bud — as is I were a sellin him, in fact kind o like 
it wuz blood-money.' 

*' 'I've bin tryin to think it's right,' she con- 
tinued, *but I declare to goodness it's powerful 
hard to get it straight in my mind. I reckon as 
how the fault's mine, though, for some of our 
best preachers of the Word are insurin, and I 
allow they've done got at the right of it.' 

**We sat facing the west. A bunch of glossy 
green water-oaks cut off the sun's rays. As 
Sabina spoke a catbird flew into the nearest tree 
and stood in questioning mien, cocking at us first 
one eye and then the other. In his bill he was 
carrying a wriggling fishworm for his offspring. 
I spoke of the bird to Sabina. 



IN LAUKEL TOWN 163 

*^ *Yes/ she answered, *Bud sets a heap o 
store by them thrushes. Nestin with us five 
years now, seems like they wuz part o the 
family.' 

^ * Here was my text. * Mrs. Hightower,' I said, 
Hhat poor bird is doing all it can, is exercising 
all the intelligence its Creator gave it, when it 
feeds and guards its little ones till they can use 
their wings. If it dies, and its nestlings come 
to want, still it has done well because the Lord 
granted it no ability to extend protection longer 
than its life. 

'^ *But suppose this father-bird were endowed, 
together with all the rest of his kind, with in- 
telligence enough to band with other father-cat- 
birds and agree that if death befell him, the 
others would help care for his little ones till 
they could care for themselves. Then, if he per- 
sisted in exposing his young ones to cold, hunger 
and death, when he could help them merely by 
helping save others when occasion required, he 
would seem a neglectful, mean catbird, wouldn't 
her 

**I went on. Sabina's eyes looked further and 
further beyond the water-oaks, grew bigger and 
bigger, more and more moist, until tears 
gathered and slowly worked down her sun- 
browned cheeks. 



164 CEKTAIN WHO DWELT 

^^Just at that moment Bud called out 

* Howdy r 

^^ ^Wall, Mr. Inshoorance Man/ he continued, 
*I jest 'lowed as how yer couldn't git time ter 
light hyer ter see us poor folks. But I'm glad 
yer come and hope yer's got Sabiny ter listen ter 
reason ; f er she says she don't want no inshoor- 
ance on me.' 

^* ^May be I were wrong,' answered his wife 
slowly, ' and if Bud kin keep up the payments, it 
might be a good thing for the children.' 

^ ^ This led to description of policies, in which 
Sabina evinced brisk interest. 

** Hardly was I done when she asked, *Why 
don't you-all write inshoorance for women-folks, 
too?' 

^^We do in favor of their children. 

** *Then I reckon we can settle this yere ques- 
tion mighty easy. Bud kin take out a policy, if 
I kin have one. For he shaint do more for the 
children than I do ; and I kin pay for mine out 
o the chicken and aig money.' 

*'From some hiding-place between the logs 
Sabina produced coin for the premiums, and we 
closed the business at once. 

* ^ Only after T had partaken of her supper of 

* smothered chicken,' had met the two children 
and promised to join Bud in a fox or coon hunt 



IN LAUKEL TOWN 165 

when frosts next came, was I able to get away 
to Kansas City/'* 

The insurance-man ended his story. 

Kobert Borrow's birthday party was drawing 
to its close. Still, each of the company must 
drink a couple of glasses of fruity punch, and all 
must join in singing **Auld Lang Syne" before 
they made final wishes of health and added 
years to their host. 

At last, after putting on top-coats in the hall, 
and lighting fresh * ^ face-warmers," the guests 
set forth, still rallying one another. 

Yet do not suppose they went in the limping 
gait commonly attributed to oldsters. Rather 
each one might have vied with Mr. A. P. Clark, 
who ran down the steps, and on the walk in front 
of the house — out in the full moonlight where 
everybody could see — cut a pigeon-wing merely 
to prove that, although eighty-four, he was the 
youngest of the party. 

In such wise the Honorable Robert Borrow 
celebrated his four-score birthday. And if this 
slight record bears no conviction that the occa- 
sion was beautiful and human, it is because, after 
all, the story we love is vain and inadequate 

♦Not in "the ordinary 'Pike County' dialect" to which 
Mark Twain bears witness in "Huckleberry Finn," but in 
one of its Missouri varieties this story has been written 
and spelled, as Bud and Sabiny spoke, by N. J. S. 



166 CERTAIN WHO DWELT 

when compared to life itself — because, if one 
may reach so high, it is better to be Achilles, or 
high-helmeted Hector, than a commemorator, 
even snch as Father Homer. 



VII 

As years went on Laurel Town was drifting 
into the moorings of an academic, residence- 
town, where the old, democratic estimate of the 
person maintains itself and yet standards of 
good breeding prevail; where an easy humor 
thrives ; where houses have an air of retirement, 
leisure, and women exchange cooking receipts 
and embroidery patterns, and the home life of 
the men is comfortable and constant, proving 
the law John Stuart Mill stated, ** Whoever has 
a wife and children has given hostages to Mrs. 
Grundy." 

In all this maturing clubs figured; for in- 
stances, the men's *^01d and New.'' Meeting 
every fortnight for logomachy, its host of the 
evening chose a subject on which his thoughts 
and studies had turned, and presented his views ; 
continuing lighter arguments upon his guests 
going in to his table for oysters. Before the 
end of the discussion each man commonly ac- 



IIT LAUKEL TOWN 167 

cepted the ground posited or gave reasons for 
dissent. 

Tuesday afternoons, too, their alert minds 
bent on invigoration, women gathered under 
variously named unions — the first about fifty 
years ago as ** Friends in Council," a title bor- 
rowed from an English book. Decorous and as 
radical and vigorous as that time's estimate* 
permitted *^ ladies'' to be, the club, one year for 
example, studied the history of painting in 
Europe. 

A whetter of interest to house-cireumscribed 
women ! A sweetener and expander of the mind ! 

In their founder the ** Friends" honored a 
spinster of best American traditions; and tall, 
high-shouldered, of dark hair, Juno brow and 
eyes, and a mouth filled with burnished teeth; 
a lady carefully habited also in prevailing 
fashions.f 

♦Terribly unconventional it was for a woman to be vigor- 
ous in those days, when "The Little Health of Ladles" 
excited public discussion; and ridicule of strength and 
independence in women, such gibes as you find in pages of 
Thackeray and Tennyson and countless other writers, still 
bore their sting. 

tHer broaches, "lady-trifles . . . 

Immoment toys, things of such dignity 
As we greet modem friends withal," 
ranged from carved gold to Florentine mosaic and Neapolitan 
coral. Sitting before her every morning, I counted a new 
one twenty-eight days, and then gave up numbering for 
fear I should repeat and so exaggerate. 



168 CERTAIN WHO DWELT 

Along with ttiis massive physical impressive- 
ness, a native intelligence increased through 
study of various tongues of Europe, and a quiet, 
decisive, formal, nay, icily conventional man- 
ner, which, like her figure, always seemed well- 
corseted. 

One March day this ceremonious dame issued 
from Fraser Hall at the moment with myself, a 
slender student. During the morning she had 
been speaking French with classes reading Mo- 
liere, or Racine. I had listened to stories by our 
Latin-tongued professor and Englished Tully. 

A March day, we say, and in Kansas. Spank- 
ing gales enlivened the noon hour, and I ac- 
cepted her invitation to join the lady. It was 
a professor's invitation; one, like royalty's, 
you can not easily refuse. Then, too, her talk 
was delightful; and at this juncture walking 
surer-footed in her lee. 

As we went on our chat somehow, perhaps 
because of her founder's interest, fell about the 
** Friends in Council," that year studying the 
history of the French people. Next week, she 
said, they would be reading and talking about 
the war in La Vendee. 

**You will probably read Swinburne's **Les 
Noyades," I ventured, the mention of Vendee 
bring Carrier to my mind. 



IN LAUREL TOWN 169 

**Don^t know it," answered the lady. **Wliat 
isitr 

**0h, I mean the poem turning on an event 
when Carrier was torturing in Nantes.'' 

*^I never heard of it," returned the lady. **Is 
it long? If it isn't, won't you read it to us?" 

So it came that next Tuesday afternoon I met 
with the wives and mothers. They received me 
with the measured, Anglo-American good-breed- 
ing of that time, and when they were done with 
their tasks the founder-president smiling toward 
me explained why a student was with them — 
because of a beautiful poem with which she 
would supplement their day's programme. 

At once I began : 

"In the wild fifth year of the change of things, 
When France was glorious and blood-red, fair 

With the dust of battle and death of kings, 
A queen among men, with helmeted hair. 

Carrier came down to the Loire and slew, 

Till all the ways and the waves waxed red ; 

Bound and drowned, slaying two by two. 
Maidens and young men, naked and wed." 

The poem held me. I did not think of auditors 
till I came to its end. Saturated with its beauty, 
I looked up. 

Did I see aright? — dismay, perhaps, on 
nearly every face ! 



170 CERTAIN WHO DWELT 

Had I not read the poem well? I thought shiv- 
ering. Had I wronged the work? an unusual 
subject treated with the adroitness of genius. 
Possibility of negation, that others would not 
enjoy it, had not crossed my mind. 

An awful pause. Then one lady, who seemed 
to me more prunes-and-prisms than any I knew, 
remarked that it was an undesirable subject for 
a young lady to deal with — in fact, (this with a 
compression of lips and a side-glance) the poem 
was not decent. 

Oh, what a sudden, striking humiliation! It 
was personal, then! The trouble was not with 
Swinburne's poem, but with me ! These women 
evidently united in their estimate. No voice 
spoke for the poem ; or for the reader of it. 

Why had I merited such a rebuff? I ques- 
tioned the blue-bound **Laus Veneris" in my 
hand. The poet believed in the poem; else he 
would not have published it. Swinburne would 
defend me ; he knew why I had read his verses. 

Pulling on of wraps, and getting together 
books and papers, sounded a relief. Then 
echoing good-byes. I went forth in a cold per- 
spiration, marvelling at the mysterious deeds of 
Friends when in Council — and yet, after re- 
acting from the shock of their condemnation, 
with an underlying feeling of triumph that I had 



IN- LAUREL TOWN 171 

somewhat those dames did not, perhaps some 
power of contemplation and enjoyment of the 
art of letters. 

Years after, only, did a glimmer come to me 
of what the mature women of that afternoon may 
have thought, and mentally endued me with 
thinking. Long after, only, did I see what pos- 
sibly their horizon had not ascribed to me — ^that 
solely because of innocence of the world could I, 
elated with its music and historic picture, un- 
conscious of its fleshliness, read the poem to 
their audience. 

Nor did matters end there. They had illu- 
minating corollaries. Later when I told this 
**Les Noyades" adventure to a literary man of 
Boston, upon his asking me how, when a student, 
in classes with men-students, reading Greek and 
Latin with men-instructors — ^how I managed 
when I came upon sentences saying what we 
modems deem immodest. The literator said he 
was seeking my help to arguments he purposed 
to make for the admission of women to univer- 
sities. 

At that hour, I should for clarity add, a quota 
of men wrote and talked against the education 
of women, and women's study of Greek and 
Latin ; saying, for instance, that passages in the 
old classics written in the naturalism of the 



172 CERTAIN WHO DWELT 

ancients, would instruct our American girls in 
what they should not know; would brush the 
bloom from the grape, harden tender minds, sug- 
gest there was sex in the world. To read that 
a poet kissed a maid might be permitted girls — 
staid Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen would 
allow that; but without loss of mental cleanli- 
ness, even, perhaps, of moral standards, young 
women could not know how many times Catullus 
sang he had kissed, or was going to kiss, Lesbia. 

All expression as to sex that girls might, 
without contamination, assimilate, seemed, to 
these men's thinking, to lie in an Old Testament ; 
if sex-knowledge defiles, a defiler outstripping 
the classics.* 

'*What.'' said the literator in the interview 
he had sought, **What did yon do when you, a 
student, came upon Greek and Latin passages 
not in accord with our view of modesty?" 

* *I saw them in my reading at home. In class- 
room I skipped the matter and made no refer- 
ence to it." 

♦Again, "What changes may one life see!" A study- 
enamoured Anglo-American girl shocking a group of married 
women by reading to them a Swinburne ballad, in the 
eighteen-seventies ! An Anglo-American literary man 
analyzing the women's prejudices, in the eighteen-eighties, 
in his labor to overcome other prejudices! And to-day's 
girl! — her Thais plays and Thais operas; her clothing, de- 
vised mainly by an exotic, oriental people and reflecting 
the character of the parasitic odalisque. 



IN LAUREL TOWN 173 

**Aiid the professor — didn't hef' pursued the 
doctor of letters in probing spirit. 

' * Never. Spontaneously, tacitly, such matters 
were passed by. You pass them by, everybody 
passes them by when they come up in readings 
in churches and other public places. Our stu- 
dents, men and women alike, merely treated 
sentences objectionable from our day's point of 
view as if they were not there." 

** Didn't anything embarrassing ever happen?" 
persisted the literary man. 

**Not while I was a student. When I had the 
chair of Greek a boy one day snickered on com- 
ing to such a passage. His laugh was not em- 
barrassing, nauseating rather, and the young 
men of the class treated his amusement in a way 
that taught him better manners — ^you can always 
trust the clean instincts of the university boy. 
Passages, such, for instance, as the last of the 
third book of **The Iliad," students merely 
passed over. They saw what they were outside 
class-room." 

**You say you were fond of Swinburne's 
poetry, even when you were seventeen," con- 
tinued the litterateur (if one may report to the 
very limit of digression), **What about his out- 
speaking?" 

I loved Swinburne for his freshness, his 



(t 



174 CERTAIN WHO DWELT 

Greek quality, his marvellous music. You do 
not go to Swinburne for ideas — perhaps we may 
except impassioned democracy, praise of the 
glory of liberty. The sexuality of his poems 
and ballads an American girl does not think of, 
sees only as a faint shadow. His music, as the 
choruses in **Atalanta in Calydon," his love of 
freedom, his revolt from inept, smoothly-pol- 
ished phrases, his color, his tumbling waves of 
rhythm recalling the motion of the salt sea he 
sang — these kept his books in my hands for 
years. 

*^You can not deny American girls of Protes- 
tant training a native purity. For some reason 
they do not know^ or do not understand the 
meretricious. They don't interpret it when it 
is set before them. Of Protestant training, I 
say, because I have seen other girls more sophis- 
ticated.'' 

If what I told the literator enriched his argu- 
ment I do not now recall. In those days the 
Boston mind, whether of Beacon Hill, Back 
Bay or Columbus Avenue, not yet fully con- 
scious of its new status of loss of leadership, 
still maintaining a de haut en has attitude 
toward the rest of the country, showed distrust 
of whatever generated outside, especially west- 
ward of, its circumference. 



EAELIEE DAYS AT THE UNIVERSITY 

OP KANSAS 



WINDS OF DELPHIC KANSAS 

Salf'West, half-east; half-north, half-south; 
As in Grecian Delphi in days of old, 
The centre of the world as men then told; 

The ivinds hlow ever, and through a god's mouth. 

O the snow-footed, ice-armored winds of the prairiCt 

Rushing out mightily 
Fr(ym cosmic caves of the north. 
From glacial forces of earth and air, 

The winter winds of the prairie! 
They drive dark clouds from morn to mom; 
They shake the light o''er stuhhles of com; 
They whistle through woods of leaves all shonif 
With never a hint of the spring to he horn; 

The flesh-freezing winds of the prairie! 

Half-north, half-south; half-east, half-west; 
The airs pour ever; the winds never rest; 

O the sun-lifted, cotton-soft winds of the prairie. 

Cheering right merrily 
From tillage lands of the south, 
From warmth of hreeding southern seas. 

The June-sweet winds of the prairie! 
They drive silver clouds all day to its close, 
And shake glowing light on young corn in rows; 
They rock the trees till the small hirds drowse; 
They stoirl the fragrance of wild-grape and rose; 

The seminal winds of the prairie! 



176 



Half-south, half-north; half-west, half-east; 
A people intoxicate ; and icinds do not cease; 

O the free-state, Purita^uspirited winds of the prairie. 
Singing right heartily 
That gods were lut folk who were free^ 
That folk who are free are as gods; 
The human-voiced winds of the prairie! 
They call Brown of hloody-hlade from Osawatomie; 
They smite swift the shackle — the slave is free; 
To all the world they say in their humanity 
*'Come here and tuild a home loyal to me;** 
The primal-souled winds of the prairie! 

Half-east, half-west; half-south, half-north; 

All forces here meet, hut the free alone art toorth; 

O the self-reliant, right-seeking winds of the prairie^ 
Bloxcing out lustily 

From the race-hrood of 'New England 

In this western New England; 
The altruistic, rainbow-future winds of the prairie! 
They strive ever after the ideal — Better! Better! 
Till to-day they sing "Melior! Brook no fetter! 
Of freedom the spirit seek ye; not the letter! 
Melior! Melior! Better! Better!*' 

The cloud-dispelling, star-climMng winds of the prairie! 

So, prophetic in seal, through hot loinds and cold; 

As in Grecian Delphi in days of old; 

The centre of the world as msn then told; 
Half-west, half-east; half-north, half-south; 
The Spirit speaks ever, and through a god's mouth. 



177 



TO THE UNIVERSITY 

As moon-drawn waters rise to heightB 
From deep, far places in the sea; 
80 shall thy people seek the Right 
Led by a steadfast strength in thee. 

What Light thy folk shall have is thine; 
Their darkness — they did not aspire 
To reach toward thy gleaming shrine. 
And seize they all-illuming fire. 



''WITNESS UNTO THE TRUTH" 

"Thou Shalt not bear false witness'*, spoke the God 
of Israel on Horeh's barren height. 

''Unto the truth bear loitness", speaks the Voice 
Of every folk who strengthens in the Right : — 
To men of Athens in vast jury courts 
Judging their brother Greek by law and fact; 
To Romans in their order and reports 
Of the Twelve Tables and juridic act; 
To Paul, the evangel, who flamed his faith 
For Jew and Gentile round the Midland shore; 
To Mahomet, the Arab, him who saith 
"Thy justice knoweth God for evermore", 

"Unto the truth bear witness", urge tmth awe 
All codes and ethics of our School of Law. 



178 



A SOWER TO THE SPIRIT 

To he razed, first fane of the state's pure learning! 
Thou, North College! 

After twenty thousand suns thy walls have watched rising 
beyond the river! 

Now, hy ice-freighted storms of winter thou h^ast withstood; 
hy tcinds of March thou hast buffeted; by cloud-em- 
battled, thunder-bolted June rains thou hast braved : 

Yea, wA)re — 

By the unconquerable spirit of man! 

By all civic loyalties since Demosthenes lifted the heart of 
the people of Athens; 

By all sincerities and pieties since the singing of Corner 
and Virgil; 

By Anglo-Saxon state-makers, from whose fiaming ardor for 
freedom, thou didst spring; by craftsmen tcho set thy 
brick on brick, puncheon over puncheon, that wisdom 
might house within their inchoate commonwealth; 

Thou Shalt not perish. 

Whatever generations Kansas folk stand fast fixed in 
loyalty to their state-founders* ideals — loyalty to truth, 
to justice and exalting teachings; 

Whatever generations Kansas folk abide sensible of the 
mightiest of gifts; 

Thou Shalt live on. 

"He that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life 
everlasting.** 

Through all generations, seeder of ¥>isdom of tJie ages, 
t?iou Shalt endure. 

179 



EARLIER DAYS AT THE UNIVERSITY 
OF KANSAS 

L 

Founders of our government and old-time 
prophets of our people, the Puritans are, we 
repeat, to-day the heart of the American nation- 
ality. Their instinct for state-building did away 
with the autocrat, and showed all peoples of 
the earth the road to liberty and the pursuit of 
happiness. 

They would purify life of mouthing profes- 
sions ; and stand only by truth. In their think- 
ing truth could not be too hard provender for 
any mind. Therefore they would do away with 
symbols in every relation of the individual. 
Symbols to their earnestness intruded upon 
truth, distorted truth, at last displaced truth, 
and by substitutions weakened and disordered 
the people's intellect. 

The Puritan was an unalienable democrat. 
He loved simple form in his government, simple 
statements in his religion, simple humanity in 

181 



182 EARLIER DAYS AT 

his morals; even simple form and color in his 
dwelling and meeting house. 

The Puritan was a utilitarian as well as an 
idealist. 

Such also were Puritan offspring, the early 
people of Kansas, carrying onward Puritan 
traditions. They aimed to clean life of the lie 
that equitable work degrades, and of supersti- 
tions hostile to the fellowship of man. They 
were futurists, zealots, old-time Americans, the 
strong and even the weak striving for an idea, 
steeped in constructive optimism, laborers 
towards a utilitarian Utopia, seeking conditions 
which they knew had never existed anywhere, 
first of all giving themselves. 

Our democratic, Puritan way, you see, whose 
course here in America started when the Eng- 
lish devouts set foot on this continent. Through 
their blood and their transmitted spirit, it has 
gone on to this hour. 

So our human kind goes forward, driving on, 
blundering on through lives of generations, 
eying sl light afar off, aiming at the right thing, 
sometimes doing it, often failing, but never put- 
ting aside effort to reach its shining goal. 

Now, in this paragraph only, let us look back 
to centuries before our Puritans, when schools 
were for the education of churchmen, when 



THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS 183 

priests and brotherhoods were the reservoirs of 
learning ; preserves, transcribers, commentators, 
employing their time and strength to keep and 
exalt rules and authorities upon which their 
ease, their honor and life itself rested. What 
their schools taught served theologians and the 
ends of theology. The people at large were 
sunk in gross ignorance; their natural growth 
dwarfed, their minds unawakened, stupefied by 
unremitting toil to gain their scantiest physical 
sustenance. Events brought about emancipation 
of intellectual life in the Restoration of Learn- 
ing. In the next century sprang forward eman- 
cipation of religious life in the Great Reforma- 
tion. Then, in the seventeenth century, followed 
emancipation of political life in the Puritan 
Revolution. 

In their heirship of these three great move- 
ments our Puritans embodied a regnant prin- 
ciple of Protestantism whose preciousness has 
been put by many, but by none better than 
Shakespeare in this sentence; 

"Ignorance is the curse of God ; 
Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven". 

Puritans, that is, developed a passion for 
founding schools and teaching children. ** After 
God had carried us safe to New England, and we 



184 KABJJRR DATS AT 

had builded our houses, provided necessaries 
for our livelihood, reared convenient places for 
God^s worship, and settled the civil government, 
one of the next things we longed for, and looked 
after, was to advance learning and perpetuate 
it to posterity." 

With the result that those Puritans who came 
to American soil made our race's early history, 
in good degree, the effort of an earnest people 
to set in sun-bright clarity education's benefac- 
tions. 

These old Puritan ideas the early Kansans 
inherited.* Obedient to their mighty estate, in 
the evolution of order in their commonwealth, 
they proceeded to build toward their educa- 
tional ideal. 

The ideal took on the form of a pyramid, you 
might say — yet a pyramid greater than any 
people before their times had ever reared. Cen- 
turies ago, near three-score, old Khufu — to cite 
the most renowned of all who built pyramids 
heretofore — old Cheops set the vast pyramid 

♦So early as October, 1854 (shortly after the passage of 
the Kansas-Nebraska Bill) the first governor of Kansas 
territory, Andrew H. Reeder, said in a speech at Lawrence 
City (reported in the Herald of Freedom, No. 3, Vol. 1) ; 
"It is important to a state that the people should be edu- 
cated; for when they are thoroughly educated they under- 
stand their own rights, and know how to defend the rights 
of others." 



THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS 185 

which bears his name upon Sahara's sands, cov- 
ering upwards of thirteen acres. With the labor 
of slaves he vaiagloriously made a dead-house 
to preserve the embalmed flesh of an absolute 
sovereign. 

But the early individualists of Kansas built 
their pyramid, greater than any pyramid ever 
raised save in other states building with like 
ideals — the early individualists of Kansas built 
their pyramid as a living-house for making best 
possible, forward-looking citizens of a democ- 
racy, any one loyal citizen being worth many 
absolute sovereigns; a living-house, not upon 
sands of a desert, but rock-founded in a rich 
soil materially and spiritually housing and fur- 
thering the soul of its people. 

This greatest of pyramids, the educational, the 
Kansans reared over the whole vast acreage 
of their state — its base the common school for 
every child ; and, superimposed on the common, 
high schools for all who would seek them. And 
above these secondary schools university teach- 
ings of what is for all ages true — teachings 
affording Everybody content of that which the 
spirit of man has wrung from his own soul, and 
from the nature about him, through the aeons 
of our human evolution. A pyramid, you see, 
built on preserving and glorifying everlastingly 



186 EARLIER DAYS AT 

not one dead prince, but a whole, united, vital 

people. 

This educational pyramid, stretching the 
length of Kansas, four hundred miles, and its 
breadth, two hundred miles, has then for its apex 
a university, a House of Light, testifying that 
its supporters apply ideas to life with over- 
whelming force. 

For any democracy must be loyal to the truth 
that instruction of the people in the imperish- 
able ideals of humanity forwards that people, 
and raises the plane of their knowledge and of 
their ethics. 

And the Kansans set it, this Light-House of 
their educational ideal, upon a wind-driven hill ; 
with result that all comers to Laurel Town, and 
all passers-by Laurel Town, may see its outer 
beauty and behold what a beacon the people 
have, what a treasure and guide to safe-joumey- 
ings, if in the future, they shall welter through 
any void of mystery and dread. 

In another way, also, this university of the 
Kansans should embody their educational ideals. 
With genuine democratic spirit those lonely, 
passionate, experimental founders would have 
education broaden and deepen all human life. 
Not men's alone. Women, as well, should be 
students. A golden leaf from Aristotle's 



THE UNIVEESITY OF KANSAS 187 

** Politics^' they carried in their hearts — a prin- 
ciple, in fact, which affected nearly all their 
foundation: ** Women and children must be 
trained by education with an eye to the state, if 
the virtues of either make any difference in the 
virtue of the state. And they must make a dif- 
ference ; for the children grow up to be citizens, 
and half the free persons in a state are women/' 

The sentiment that would abolish women- 
competitors in what men esteem their fields of 
labor has often worked against women in democ- 
racies, overbalanced men's judgment and led to 
malignant injustices. Men have been little dis- 
posed to raise women from ages-long position 
as handmaid in their works and ambitions to a 
rivalship in the same ambitions and works. As 
a rule aristocracies have been more generous to 
women than democracies. 

But in Kansas, when a state-making ideal, in 
angry revolt against social iniquities, would take 
the people in its arms and lift them heavenward, 
deepen consciousness of their life and vocation 
by competent knowledge of the mysteries of 
the great nature about them, by ideas of what 
other dwellers on earth have done; in Kansas, 
when state-making ideals dominated, their or- 
gans of expression determined that women, with 
men, should profit by whatever education the 



188 EAELIEB DATS AT 

state afforded. ** Where there is no vision," 
said an old maxim-maker, **the people perish." 
Contrariwise, where there is vision, the people 
thrive. So came the University of Kansas — 
result of the leaguing of a long-visioned people. 
Strange that through its history short-vis- 
ioned folks should assail the institution, its 
every evolving interest, its every expanding am- 
bition. Fortunately for the state the myopic 
have numbered fewer than the far-sighted. At 
times in the world^s history long-visioned people 
have counted less than the short. Ten righteous 
men could once save a city; and old Abram 
prayed. Yet the city perished. 

n 

It was now the eighteen-sixties ; in Kansas; 
and Civil War ended. Hardly had the people 
eased their hands of the rifle, however, and 
strengthened their gaunt forms from the win- 
ning, when booms began assailing their ears — 
money-mad bondsellers exciting the futurists to 
town-building and county-forming, to railway 
construction, to cattle-raising, to irrigation- 
ditch-digging. In other words, astute financiers 
in eastern counting houses played with the vir- 
tuous weaknesses of idealistic pioneer-agricul- 



THE UNIVEKSITY OF KANSAS 189 

turists — sanguine temperaments always ** going 
to be'' prosperous; and so fired their imagina- 
tion that at times they called special poll-days 
for voting their little moneys to the conscience- 
less counter-desks ; and gave not only their own 
strength and time, hut their men and horses, 
their machinery to fill the counter-desks' pockets 
— something of the old-time saint, something of 
the old-time martyr; quite as much Tartarin of 
Tarascon as Don Quixote, you see. 

But disappointments came and reactions set 
in. Discontent with the farmers' social condi- 
tion, demand for a voice in affairs commensur- 
ate with their economic value, dissatisfaction 
with charges of middlemen and with discrimina- 
tion of railways, protest against lessening prices 
of the soil-tillers product, at last led farmers to 
co-operate, and to their forming a party which 
entered practical politics under the name of 
Grangers. 

The Granger movement was a protest, we 
say. *'The old feudal system," farmers reas- 
oned, '* sprang up when the chief form of wealth 
was land. On one side was the rich man who, 
to get an income from his tenure, rented it for 
service. On the other was the man who had his 
service to sell ; which he traded for the use of 
the ground. 



190 EAELIER DAYS AT 

^^In this new feudal system burgeoning about 
us, where the chief form of wealth is commerce, 
the man rich in all the vast material of commerce 
is the baron. He gets an income by renting 
berths to the poor man with labor to barter, 
pinches us land-workers as his legitimate spoil 
and cheapens our product. 

**Just as in old centuries the baron, or rich 
man, gobbled small lands and demanded service 
from the freeholder, so now *Big Interests,' 
railways and other corporations, swallow little 
businesses, crowd to the wall few-acre, inde- 
pendent farmers and small traders, starve them 
into selling out, and force them to gain support 
in dependencies and ofi&ces of their employ. 
To-day in the huge armies of commerce-clerks 
and meagre farmings, we have incipient serf 
conditions. 

**In the old time the strong seized the rights 
of government. The court that enforced the 
law was their court." 

By such reasonings the Granger movement 
strengthened, and became an outstanding pro- 
test of the American pioneer against develop- 
ments and complexities he could not meet; his 
organized declaration against gradual enchain- 
ing — in fact, the first united agriculturists'- 
voice in the now world-wide cry for the eman- 



THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS 191 

cipation of the workers' life; an on-coming 
emancipation whose final fruits must be men 
and women so large-souled that money to them 
means what the word itseK, in an early use, 
signified, the adviser; people so honorable in 
word and deed that their simplicity makes 
decked-out show and pomp ridiculous. 

Spread of Grangers' tenets accomplished 
great good. Kansas stump-speakers from 
Granger cohorts, however, during one of the 
hottest campaigns of the eighteen-seventies, 
misrepresented the university. They threatened 
to cut off legislative appropriations which sup- 
ported it, and cried out that the professors were 
a lot of **old barnacles;" that they would dis- 
member the institution altogether if they should 
win at the polls. Twilight of election day 
showed Grangers sweeping the state. 

As we look back now, the threats of these cam- 
paigners become mere perf ervid ignorance, red- 
rsg oratory. The university was not dilacer- 
ated. It lived on, and to-day bears proof of 
health in its survival after certain ideas and men 
inducted into its life-current — its vigor remind- 
ing you of a super-healthy human body immune 
from stated maladies after fever-giving serums 
have been injected in its blood. 

This night of the Granger election in the early 



192 EAELIER DAYS AT 

seventies, however, when Laurel Town had re- 
ceived returns and closed her polls, a group of 
young men-students, eagerly watching incoming 
figures, saw for the future only a ruthless carry- 
ing out of Granger threats and the crushing of 
a university they loved. 

Before a single adverse act of the party arriv- 
ing at power, their loyalty was forecasting oppo- 
sition, plotting revenge, giving itself as inex- 
perience will, as youth will, to sudden, blind, 
retaliatory feeling, to the raging reprisal of the 
herd. 

An impulse struck them to arm with staves 
and raid the country-side. They had no clear 
thought, no definite plan of action. Grangers 
were farmers; farmers Grangers; therefore all 
soil-tillers, no matter how unoffending, however 
non-Granger, object of their spirit of vengeance. 

Precisely such instincts as led our forebears 
to forays famed in song and story gripped these 
boys. Back in the centuries, and yet not so very 
far back either, when our ancestors lived in Eng- 
land and Scotland and Ireland and other parts 
of Europe, neighbors in armed bands pillaged 
one another to gain some possession, or for 
sport. In early Ireland, when all land was com- 
mon and property lay mainly in herds, men 
took their every-day exercise in cattle-spoiling. 



THE UNIVEKSITY OF KANSAS 193 

**Tlie Cattle-raid of Cooley" incited the greatest 
of Irish epics. ** Fleet foot in the foray^' stood 
on every march between old Wales and Eng- 
land, Scotland and England, and even on bound- 
ary lands of France and Italy. Our race bal- 
lads, such as **The Hunting of the Cheviot,'* 
make this clear. So also our chronicles. Frois- 
sart's tale of the battle of Otterboum pictures 
the Scots ** doing many sore displeasures," 
** burning and exiling the country" when they 
penetrated England. 

That night of the Grangers' victory in Kan- 
sas, we say, these university students were pos- 
sessed of impulses inherited by our north-of- 
Europe races. Who knows but the very blood 
of Hotspur, or of James Douglas, went cours- 
ing through veins of more than one of the boys ? 
Not a soul of them, probably, who had not come 
down from fighters at Chevy Chase, or like con- 
tests. Then, besides this, there were the group- 
impulses of forefathers in town-against-gown, 
gown-against-town life. 

m. 

A north-west wind had cleared the sky, and 
a fulling moon filled the night with such splendor 
that the earth whitened where its light struck, 



194 EARLIER DAYS AT 

and bold, black shadows lay back of all that op- 
posed its pale glory. The dry, packed ground, 
frost-hardened, rang under footsteps as if it 
were iron. 

An exhilerating night ! With its stimulus of 
cold, brilliant, electric air, undeniably a night 
to develop a temper for walking. To study such 
a night! To sleep such a night! Not when 
Grangers had swept the state. 

'^Whafs the use, anyway! A fortnight and 
there won't be a university to go to.'' 

*'Then why worry about that assignment of 
Tacitus r^ 

**And those problems in calculus !" 

''That Bestimmung of Fichte!" 

''Have at 'em ! Have at 'em," the band roared, 
' ' Grangers ! Grangers !" 

Noise is necessary in a sally — ^unless secrecy 
and victory are pledged. Not merely one hot, 
flashing shout — that does not let off electric cur- 
rents. Ehythm leads the blood to even beating, 
unifies feeling and chokes back individual con- 
science pressing to the fore. Sing they must. 
"Marching through Georgia" they began; and 
soon "Maryland, my Maryland.'* 

A buoyant air carried their voices far. Wives 
who had gathered husband and children round 
the family reading lamp — a favorite way of 



THE UNIVEESITY OF KANSAS 195 

spending the evening in those days — ^listened 
wondering, and sent ** honey" to the door to see 
what the passing singers meant. **Only nniver- 
sity-boys, mother dear/' the scout reported. 

These student-forayers, we say, bore through 
the town northwestwardly, till street and honse 
no longer hemmed their way and they had 
traversed the big ravine. 

A country road, picketed on either side by 
osage-orange hedges opened before their eyes. 
Through such brambles f orayers might not enter 
Grangers' acres. 

Forward then ! 

Forward to the little ravine; then across it, 
and so on till at last they reached the north 
woods spoken of on page eight foregoing — ^those 
north woods from whose depths the music of 
whip-poor-wills wailed in moon-lit, summer 
nights. 

Fate no man can explicate. What lot now 
swerved these self-appointed requiters off the 
main road and down a by-path not one of them 
could ever afterwards tell. From their spirit 
reason, good-sense, had fled. Youth's fun-mak- 
ing and youth's rage for mere action^ even if 
inept, had the lead. 

William Crooks, an American of the old 
bound-to-win-out, **over-the-mountains" stock. 



196 EAELIER DATS AT 

had united his fortune with a buxom wife back in 
his native state; and after tacking and veering 
their prairie-schooner to Kansas, they had 
settled in a little house near the north woods, 
with such belongings as delight thrifty soil- 
dwellers gathered about them. 

This moonlit night their cottage stood calm 
and silent. Inside Mr. and Mrs. Crooks were 
sleeping the sleep of tired muscles and peace of 
mind ; and on their perches in an outhouse hard 
by sat the lady^s birds, snugly somnolent, fold- 
ing wings over twenty to thirty pounds apiece 
avoirdupois — fat bronze turkeys, and at this 
November election-night ready for Thanksgiv- 
ing and Christmas markets. 

A roost so remote from the main road had 
little need of padlock. Any one might take the 
pin from the post and swing back the door. 

'*Whafs thisr 

**A roost r 

**A roost r 

A f orayer's hand draws the pin and opens the 
door. 

**Do I see chickens ?'' — ^peering inside. 

^^Do ir 

All try to thrust their heads in. 

**No, I do not see chickens.*' 

''What do I seer 



THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS 197 

** Turkeys!" 

**T-u-r-k-s/' 

** A brace of the birds ! What d^ye say f ' 

** Three would make it surer!" 

'^ A feast!' 

* * Draw their blood and pledge everlasting war 
on Grangers." 

'^Careful! Gemini! Grab their throats so they 
won't squawk." 

The f orayers rush up the hill, toward the main- 
traveled road, hugging the fowls so tight that 
not a sound could escape their beaks. 

** Let's find a place to roast 'em." 

**Not round here. What'd we cook 'em int" 

A moment's pause. 

*■* Confound it! What shall we do with the 
blamed things now we've got 'em I Can n't take 
'em to a landlady — she'd say why this? — and 
why that ? — and go off on her ear." 

*'Got to cook 'em ourselves." 

* * Cook 'em ourselves ! You know a lot about 
it!" 

'*Huh ! I helped two summers in our Colorado 
camp." 

''Well, then, where!" 

Chorus: *'Yes, oh-h-h where!" 

* ' I've got it ! Donegal, that fellow with grades 
in zoology — janitor — ^batches in basement of old 



198 EAELIER DAYS AT 

North College; probably hasn't had a bite of 
anything but corn pone and bacon since Sep- 
tember." 

*^Will he keep 'em till to-morrow night, do 
you think!'* 

**Gee! By that time we can get bread and 
things ; cook 'em by his stove !" 

"A grasshopper sat on a sweet potato Tine", 

struck up the van entering the main road. 

"A sweet potato vine, a sweet potato vine!" 

echoed the rear line. 

"A turkey gobbler waltzed up behind, 

And yanked him off that sweet potato vine", 

yelled every cub-forayer. 

But singing was too poor. They must dram- 
atize the song. One forayer must be a sweet 
potato vine. Another the grasshopper. Still 
another must waltz about and, with great show 
of a pecking turkey, *^yank" the grasshopper 
off the vine. 

In such mental and moral vacuity they trooped 
back to Laurel Town, the marvellous moonlight 
casting their figures on the broad highway in a 
blackness as dark as their deeds. 

Town gained, they made for North College, 
and by dint of beating on windows roused the 



THE UNIVEESITY OF KANSAS 199 

student-janitor to half-awake, and left their 
booty in his hands. 

Next night witnessed the sacrifice of the birds. 
And barbarians never used more binding rites, 
each of the company daubing forehead and hand 
with the victims' blood, pledging and vowing, 
as our earlier men used, to gird his body with 
thorns, to go about with ash-strewn, shaven 
head, and undertake other penance, if he failed 
in retaliatory vengence upon all Grangers dis- 
membering his faculty and withholding legisla- 
tive support of his university. 

Oaths sealed and ablutions made, the feast 
followed — turkeys, and by their side such dishes 
as to boys' zestful palates enhanced the meat's 
lusciousness. 

The morning of the evening of this merry- 
making Mr. Crooks rose early. Mr. Crooks rose 
early every morning, but now unwonted noises 
got him out of bed. His wife's turkeys were 
loose, scratching close by the house. 

Every evening, after enjoying the well- 
balanced supper Mrs. Crooks prepared, Mr. 
Crooks fastened the roost^oor with its pin. He 
knew he shut the door last night. Yet here the 
birds were outside their pen. 

He surveyed the industrious fowls through 
the window. **Annabella," he called, buttoning 



200 EAKLIER DAYS AT 

up his waistcoat, '*did you say you now have 
fourteen turkeys?'' 

*^No, seventeen/' answered his wife from her 
milk-skimming in the pantry. 

* * They're all out, and I can n't count but four- 
teen," returned Mr. Crooks. 

Mrs. Crooks hastened to his side, and even 
after another numbering, and after a searching 
of the roost and looking in the woods for wan- 
derers, fourteen were all they could muster. 

*' Niggers!" ejaculated Mr. Crooks. 

*^ Niggers!" echoed Mrs. Crooks. 

**ril get a dog," threatened Mr. Crooks, *'If 
it were the first time those brickyard darkies had 
swiped a meal from us, I might stand it. Them 
shoats they stole last July made a mighty fine 
dinner for their Fourth. A dog '11 settle their 
hash." 

*^ That's the way it always is with everything 
I have !" weakly wailed Mrs. Crooks, wiping her 
eyes on a comer of her Kentucky homespun 
apron, ^^I never can have things like other 
people !" 

A few days after these happenings, Mr. 
Crooks came to see Judge Stephens about the^ 
rent of more acres. Business done, he sat back 
in his chair, crossed his legs and told of his 
wife's loss. So it went. A farmer was the most 



THE UNIVEESITY OF KA:tTSAS 201 

bedeviled fellow on earth. Everybody tried to 
skin him, from brokers off in Wall Street to 
brickyard darkies here in Laurel Town. 

Months and months, from the day they 
hatched, Mrs. Crooks had tended those birds, 
picking the turkey-chicks out of dew-laden 
weeds, wrapping them in flannel, stuffing pepper- 
corns down their throats to ward off deadly 
chills and keep away the pip. Half of her hatch- 
ings always die, for turkeys are hard to raise ; 
and now, just now, holidays coming on and 
fowls getting highest market prices, here comes 
a nigger and picks off the finest three. Mrs. 
Crooks is just broken-hearted about it ; was cal- 
culating how her turkey-money would buy her a 
new winter dress and 'low her to send a Christ- 
mas present to the folks back in Kaintucky. 

So Mr. Crooks went on, conscious he was 
meeting sympathy. He knew many shoats and 
turkeys and chickens went off from our barns 
between sunset and sunrise, and never camo 
back. Still the Judge listened in silence. He had 
on his thinking-cap — but he always had on that. 

What was the celebration to which certain 
students, who often visited us, had invited a 
scion of the house the night after election? Why 
had the young freshman told nothing about 
where he had been and what he had done ? Com- 



202 EARLIER DAYS AT 

monly he was fond of rehearsing his merrymak- 
ings. But of this not a word. 

Then why had he said at dinner, only the night 
before, ^^ Turkey's good; but there is such a 
thing as seeing too much of it !" 

Again, what was the new badge he was wear- 
ing with evident satisfaction, in the way Greek 
letter societies wear their pins? What did the 
cross patee and its letters conceal? T — Turkey? 
Eh? C — Catchers — Crusaders? Looks that way. 
Had a band of students leagued for some pur- 
pose? What purpose? Social? Could it have 
any other incentive? Who but they knew! 

When the family met at next meal, the Judge 
asked about the cross dangling from a bit of red 
ribbon. 

'^Oh, T. C.'s — a new secret society." 

^'Who are the members?" 

Odd! The very students hotly interested in 
politics and vigorously defensive of the uni- 
versity against Grangerism ! 

^^Did the boys take the Grangers' victory at 
the polls much to heart?" 

^ ' Oh, they're getting used to it by this time" 
— here an ill-concealed smile. 

^*Do they still think the Grangers will wipe 
the university off the state's educational map?" 
'*They don't know yet." 



THE UNIVERSITY OP KANSAS 203 

Every answer fenced off definite inf onnation. 
To an expert reasoner, clever in examining wit- 
nesses, one with so native a gift at reading 
human nature, a freshman may tell more than 
he thinks he does. The history, or mystery, of 
Mrs. Crooks' turkeys cleared to definite narra- 
tive. 

The Judge talked the matter over with the 
Good Genius of our household and determined 
upon trying to recall the lightminded young 
rogues to sense of, and reverence for, law. And 
wishing to do this in a way they should not for- 
get, he sent the fraternity word that he had 
heard of its foundation and had interest in its 
development — ^would the memhers, therefore, 
take supper with him on a certain Friday even- 
ing? 

The young rascals confessed they felt flattered 
hy so speedy a recognition of their union, and 
every son of them showed his estimate by com- 
ing on the night named. 

Flushed in face from their long walk in the 
raw November air, they grouped about a blaz- 
ing fire, and their host, standing with arm on 
the shelf of the chimney piece told stories in the 
captivating, story-telling way he had. The boys 
seemed delighted — these were true human rela- 
tions, a masterly, white-haired man extendin<^ 



204 EAKLIER DAYS AT 

the hand of fellowship to their untriedness in 
life. 

Supper announced, the company filed into the 
dining room. The Judge took the head of the 
table. In front of him a huge turkey lay upon 
a platter, and midway, and at the table's foot, 
rested its fellows, smoking, fresh from the 
oven. 

But before he fell to the old-fashioned gentle- 
man^s carving of the fowl in front of him, the 
host paused and began telling how he had noted 
that the fraternity had its birth about the day 
of the Grangers' victory — in fact he connected 
its foundation with a story Mr. Crooks, who 
lived over by his north woods, told him. The 
badge of the society seemed, moreover, to con- 
firm his reasoning. And now he had invited the 
members to sup with him in hopes of for once 
satisfying their inordinate craving for the sus- 
tenance before them. 

Still further, he wanted to say that if ever 
again they needed the flesh of their totem for 
any T. C. orgies, they should come to him, and 
he would furnish it ; but he begged them never 
again to stoop to robberies, or to any breaking 
of the law, even in sport. 

He added that their raid on Mrs. Crook's roost 
had deprived the dame of her pin-money, and 



THE TJNIVEKSITY OF KANSAS 205 

upon his concluding the thieves were not unlight- 
ened, brickyard darkies, but enlightened uni- 
versity students ! ! ! — he had sent her full value 
for the turkeys they had taken. 

At sight of the big, trussed birds lying quite 
alone upon the table, that is, with neither sauces 
nor vegetables commonly served with their meat 
just then at hand, and at the beginning of the 
talk, T. C. faces showed confusion and consterna- 
tion. But as the Judge went on, what he said 
making clear his interest and affection and the 
humor that irradiated his life, the boys recovered 
their color and poise, and his speech ended amid 
their self-convicting laughter and applause and 
cries of ''We will come to you!^' 

In those days many merry dinners and sup- 
pers consorted with my Mother's table. Of all 
this to the T. C.'s was the jovialest. The foray- 
ers had so good a time, in fact, that after mid- 
night adieus and they had got almost to the big 
ravine on their star-lit walk to Laurel Town, 
they turned and came back to sing under our 
windows. 

**This supper broke up the society ,'* wrote 
Professor Robinson in his ''Reminiscences," 
"the Turkey Crusaders disbanded and their 
badges were seen no more." 



206 EARLIER DAYS AT 

IV 

Men such as Professor David Hamilton Rob- 
inson gave the university conservative strength 
in those days — men rooted in right, loyal to the 
university, not lobbying with whatever board 
controlled its administration, not among those 
constantly casting a hook afar (possibly a bit 
conscious pretensions had been uncovered) to 
see what seemingly better float they could pull 
in, but standing by the simple, indeterminate 
conditions they had accepted with their call, 
making the university's interest their interest, 
its democracy their democracy, their character 
its character ; not egotists, not prigs, not mental 
light-weights, but men of full merit and rounded 
development. 

Such was the university's first Latinist — ^hon- 
est, loyal, sincere, ever and abundantly radiating 
simple, luminous kindness; the soul of him re- 
calling a mellow-ground meadow, overspread 
with sunshine, supporting healthful, pleasant 
airs and fruitful harvests, of use for everyday 
wont and everyday living. 

It was the fine habit of Professor Robinson to 
open his classes' work of a morning by telling 
a story in Latin ; he meanwhile striding up and 
down the lecture-room, often measuring turns of 



THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS 207 

the tale by wheeling a pencil between right 
thumb and forefinger, or by stroking his rufous 
beard with his left hand. Doubtless he looked 
upon such beginnings as excellent for familiariz- 
ing our ears with a language not commonly 
spoken, and as zest-givers, catching our atten- 
tion and rapidly inducting us into another en- 
vironment. His open, serene countenance must 
still stand before many eyes ; his quiet, mellow 
voice still sound in many ears, rehearsing some 
world-important matter, or perhaps a local hap- 
pening, for instance, '^T, C/s Horribles/'* or 
^'In Re T. Cy Never a man enjoyed humor 
more. 

"T. C.'S" HOERIBILES.* 

Idm nociis media hora. In coelo nutila spissa 
Stellas alfstulerant. Vmbrarum tempus erat quo 
Horrenda ignavis monstra apparent. Pueri turn 
Parvi matrihus intus adhaerent. Non gratiorem 
'Noctem fur unquam invenit. Sed qui veniunt post 
Eanc aedem veterem? Celehrantne aliqua horrida sacra 
Mercurio furum patronof Discipulinef 
Non possunt! Tuti in lectis omnes requiescunt! 
Estne sodalicium studiosorum relevans se 
Magnis a curisf Sed cur hue conveniunt tarn 
Furtivif In manibus quidnam est vel sul) tegumentisf 
pudor! Et pullos et turkey non dene raptos! 
Vina etiam suhrepta professoris alien jus 
(Eorresco ref evens) e cella! Dedecus! Est nil 
Tutum a furibusf En pullos nunc faucihus illis 
Sorhent! "Nunc sunt in terra, turn in ictu oculi non 
Apparehunt omne in aetemum! Miseros pullos, 



208 EARLIER DAYS AT 

One morning Professor Robinson met a class 
with account of the making at his home of some 
wine. Possibly he detailed the process to illus- 
trate a verse of Horace, or to show old Roman 
usages and customs. Whatever the incentive he 
told his story. There, you would suppose, the 
pleasure ended. 

Itifelices pueros! Uli male capti 

A pueris, sed hi capicntur mox male {01 Oil) 

A Plutone atrol 

Forsan lupsis quinque diehus, cum sapiens vir 

Omnes hos juvenes ad cenam magniflcenter 

Invitavit. Tempore satie adsunt. Bene laeti 

Judex aecipiunt et ftlia pulcJura sodales 

Eos furtivos. Ad mensam veniunt. Juvenes cur 

Tarn agitanturf Quid portentum conspiciunt nunef 

Protrudunt ocuU quasi ranaruml Nihil est in 

Mensa praeter turkeys I Vnus quoque catino! 

Solum hoc, praeterea nil I 

IN BE T. c. 

Quatuor youths ad suhur'bs venunt, 
Quatuor lads their cursus tenunt, 

Versus granger's domum. 
Nunquam stop to rest their pedes, 
Nunquam find sequestered sedes, 

Sul) the shades arhorum. 

Saepe look in partis omnis, 

Fearing quidam, waked from somnis, 

Eos sequiturus. 
OalVus from some far off tectum, 
TuJ>a sounds with .great effectum, 

Putit day futurus. 



THE UNIVEESITY OF KANSAS 209 

Presumptions based on general experience 
always proved inadequate when T. C.s were by. 
Tbe Professor's Latin formulae worked into fer- 
menting minds, and roused memories in several 
members of that disbanded fraternity. Now, and 
now only, they forgot the exhortation to right 
living with which the Judge had prefaced the 
last T. C. supper. 

*^ Their old ardor returned," wrote Professor 
Robinson, **and they fairly burned to get hold 
of those wine bottles. It would be the best joke 
of their lives. 

**A few evenings after two of them called at 
the prof essor^s house, they seemed in especially 
happy mood, telling stories, joking and laughing 



Mox they reach a procul valley j 
Bound a fallen truncus rally, 

Nuhes expecterunt. 
Turn with cordes faintly heatinff, 
77unc advancing, nunc retreating, 

Castris repererunt. 

Noio ad portum Crito venit. 
Captures hostem, duos tenet. 

Whispers *'cave canem" 
Wild the pugna, charge they fecunt, 
Wilder tarn en viam maJcunt, 

Homeward primam lucem. 



210 EARLIER DAYS AT 

almost immoderately. Finally one of them, pro- 
ducing some music, offered to play it. With a 
big crash he began. And such playing ! He ran, 
and galloped, and cantered, and jumped up and 
down the keyboard until the old house fairly 
rattled from chimney-top to cellar — especially 
the cellar. Then college songs were roared with 
equal force and energy. This went on an hour 
or two, when the guests withdrew, with many 
expressions of pleasure at the delightful evening 
they had passed. 

*^The professor and his wife were a little sur- 
prised at the call of these young men, who had 
never called before, and especially at their 
rather long stay and boistrous conduct. Still 
they were glad to receive the visit, and retired 
greatly pleased to think that these T. C.'s, lately 
so wild, were now disposed to give up their dis- 
reputable practices and cultivate the graces and 
amenities. 

*^In the morning, on opening the house, many 
evidences of burglary were plainly visible — in 
fact, too plainly visible. The hoe and axe and 
pieces of candle were left near the cellar-window 
in plain sight, as if courting investigation. It 
was soon found that the cellar had been entered, 
the wine taken, and a note left in its place. 

*^The professor, for obvious reasons, never 



THE UNIYEESITY OF KANSAS 211 

mentioned his loss, but the boys thought it too 
good a joke to keep/^* 

Pranks such as these colored and individual- 
ized student-days at Laurel Town more than 
forty years ago. Their childlikeness witnesses 
reaction of youthful spirits from strain, relief- 
seeking in play — reversions to our race's 
younger years when a Rob Hoy's rule sufficed, 

"the simple plan 
That they should take who have the power 
And they should keep who can ;" 

unconscious returns, we say, to ancestral action 
when our people's moral nature had not evolved 
to the social heights of forming their govern- 
ment and fitting their life to laws of their own 
making. 

And the same ebullience — that had stolen the 
turkeys and industriously read Plato, Tacitus, 
Shakespeare and Goethe ; that had pilfered the 
Latin professor's wine and figured the orbit of 
remote planets — the same effervescing strength 
prompted unwearied muscles, one Hallow'en in 

♦This chorus from "University Legends" gives the gist 
of the note. Professor Robinson upheld prohibition then 
coming to the fore in Kansas politics : 

"Oh, the doleful, doleful ditty, 

If a man should break his pledge! 

So we'll drink up all your wine, and 
Save you from temptation's edge." 



212 EAEUBB DAYS AT 

the eighteen-seventies, to keep the night when, 
old lore avers, wizzard and witch in ** hellish 
legion sally.^' 

Unseasonable chill, housing and leading folks 
to hng their fires, hung over Laurel Town all 
that afternoon. Finally dark grey clou<i5 fell 
low, and shut in the evening with a driving rain. 
Just the weather for a self-sacrificing brother- 
hood bent on protecting their townsmen from 
seditious spirits ! 

The circling year had brought a Druidic fes- 
tival, majestic with age, they told themselves. 
Laurel Town customs would not permit com- 
munity-fires to the Sun-god, time-honored tokens 
of gratitude for harvest-bounties. Yet at least 
public-minded students might endeavor to ward 
off sin-stained ghosts who would wander abroad, 
said legend, and war that night in battalions. 

** Bells," the boys reasoned, *^have through 
thousands of years had the fame of inspiring 
terror in hobgoblins such as will ride each sep- 
arate gale; for generations their clamor has 
been reported a prophylactic and saver of 
mortals from that evil eye which will peer from 
every raindrop." 

Defying hostile weather, their first duty was 
mastery of the town's bells. They must climb 
several towers. Unmeasured seK-immolation 



THE TJNIVEESITY OF KANSAS 213 

alone could save the little city from legions of 
limbo, loose that one night of all the year. 

No height so readily met their advances as the 
square tower of the old Unitarian church. Its 
rongh-hewn stone afforded foothold and the 
roof -ridge easy entrance. A benedictive messen- 
ger of remarkable silver tones hnng in its belfry. 
To this the yonng devotees made their way, and 
after fastening cords to the belPs tongue they 
tossed ropes to their aiders and abettors below. 

"The wind blew as 'twad blawn its last; 
The rattling show'rs rose on the blast. . . . 
That night, a child might understand, 
The de'U had business on his hand;" 

but the boys descended, and retired to recesses 
of shrubbery across the street. 

From this vantage they pulled the belFs clap- 
per against its bronze cup till every weary 
townsman within hearing of it, cried, ** Heaven 
f oref end ! How can Satan cast out Satan !'^ 

A wild night, friends. 

Enthusiasm seized, and woke to daring, slen- 
der, shrinking shreds of youths. For instance, 
Frank MacLennan became so obsessed with the 
clangor that he hastened to pull the house-bell 
of a ledger-studying, law-abiding hardware mer- 
chant he had never seen. 

Answering the door-belPs ring a woman's 



214 EABLIEB DAYS AT 

gentle voice sounded from a second-story win- 
dow; **Wliat is wanted!" 

Frank, standing on the porch of the honse, ex- 
plained that he had come on business which re- 
quired a personal answer. Shortly the front 
door opened and an anxious voice invited hfto 
to go up stairs. 

The young derring-doer ascended and boldly 
entered the room of the merchant. Advanchig 
a few steps toward the bed, he said in unshrink- 
ing accents that he had to have the immediate 
advice of a specialist; **I want," he continued, 
speaking slowly and clearly, **to know the price 
of thermometers." 

The hardware man threw back the covers and 
sprang from his bed. A dim, reflected light 
showed a kicking foot speeding through the air. 
But the enquirer had anticipated the attack. His 
spare body was already half way down the 
stairs, and the only unimpeded thing that 
reached him was the merchant's roar, and reiter- 
ate call, for that East Indian coin of infinitesimal 
value known as a dam. 

Yet one more sortie these youthful dynamos 
made, when a commencement week of the eigh- 
teen-seventies came to hand. 

A few months before, the Chancellor and 
PreXf General John Fraser, had married a young 



THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS 215 

lady of Laurel Town, whose strength of charac- 
ter no wise abated from Puritan forebears, more 
than one of whom became president of Harvard 
College. In lesser qualities than character, in a 
captivating personality, and in graceful figure, 
smiling face, glancing grey eyes and fluffy 
brown curls, Mrs. Fraser was also gifted. 

Commencement neared, we say. Therefore 
through Fraser HalPs open doors poured vis- 
itors who had come to Laurel Town to witness 
the festival and were delighting themselves with 
such sights as Professor Snow's famous fossils. 
Their will to see everything at hand led them 
even to glance at a human skeleton hung in the 
physiology lecture-room. Its jointed bones had 
served an instructor for illustration during the 
last academic year, and now, locked in glass 
closet, awaited a next call to duty. 

Among other sight-seers three students went 
sauntering from room to room. Pausing here 
for some interest, examining another there, they 
came at last to the cupboard of the skeleton. At 
once they grouped close, as if in discussion, and 
while one fitted keys and tested the lock, the 
other two shielded his movements. An on-looker 
might have thought they were tracing the line 
of tibia, or fibula, through the glazed door. 

** Here's a key that will unlock it." 



216 EAIILIER DAYS AT 

**Tie it with the one that opens the lecture- 
room door." 

**Put it in your back pocket.'^ 

** Twelve o^clock Monday night, then.'' 

**By the box-elder.' 

** Don't forget the card-board." 

Two nights later three students, clad in odd 
clothes, raised a window in the basement of 
Fraser Hall. No noise awoke the janitor. 

They walked softly up stairs, unlocked the 
doors, unhooked the skeleton, and clasping it 
close in arms, crept still higher up the building. 
A westering moon lighted their way till they 
reached the loft. 

Then came gruesome work — with the stub of 
a candle, and peering into stuffy darkness which 
had no end. 

** Whose skeleton was this, anyway f asked 
one as they groped forward hugging the bones. 

** What did it do while it wore flesh on earth f 
queried the second, **What name did it answer 

tor 

**How did it come to its business of educat- 
ing sophomores in the articulation of their 
bodies instead of lying decently and comfortably 
in the ground f continued the first. **Did its 
owner forfeit his life for some crime f 

* ^ Gee whizz ! Let's get out of this !" 



THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS 217 

*'You growling ! Huh ; You got us into it.'' 

Cheek by jowl with a skeleton once a man's, 
creeping over loose boards of a loft in semi- 
darkness, feeling forward toward a broad cir- 
cular opening in the middle of the floor — all this 
they had not put in their programme. 

** Here's the rim of the hole.'' 

They tied a rope to the hook fastened in the 
skull. To the bones of the feet they hung a card 
about eighteen inches square and stretched the 
skeleton along "the curved edge. 

Then they turned and scuttled to the basement 
window through which they had entered. 

A soft, teeming night of early summer lay 
on hill and low lands. Winds forerunning a 
June 'dawn blew over the campus. In the east 
shone the morning star. 

But freshening day, instead of cooling, 
strengthened their fever, and before separating 
they drew lots to determine who should carry 
their labor to its end. 

Commencement arrived. 

The all-seeing sun did not look upon a happier 
people. "Work of a hard year now quite done, 
and hours full of the buoyant joy that com- 
mencement alone knows — when aged, academic 
sobriety forgets its anchylosis and units with 
supple, jocund youth. Chancellor himself viv- 



218 EAEIilEB DAYS AT 

idly happy. The grace which brightens women 
of university towns during commencement 
sitting signally upon the Chancellor's wife. 

So passed the day. Night fell. A band of 
the United States Army still discoursed music 
in the crowded aula; when through the opening 
in the ceiling that awaited a central chandelier, 
the physiology-lecturer's skeleton came circling 
down to the rhythm of a Strauss waltz — swing- 
ing slowly in broad rounds over the assembled 
people. A card dangling from its heels bore 
the legend PE^X 

Few saw the waltzing death's head at first, 
and those who did met it in amazed silence. 
Then, when they had pointed it out to others, 
a murmur of disapproval rose. Yet, finally, 
sense of the inconsequence of the conceit stole 
over the throng, and a few gravely smiled. 

Trying moments, these, to the gallant gen- 
eral ! At the end of so perfect a day ! And so 
successful a year! Yet his canny Scottish wit 
stood steadfast, and when Mrs. Fraser, with 
the confiding air of faculty- wives, smilingly 
asked; **What does Prex mean?" — ^without a 
moment's hesitation the Chancellor answered; 
••^Faculty." 

Thoughtless sport! Eough-house tomfoolery; 
but cleanhearted. The hatchers of the joke ad- 



THE TJNIVEKSITY OF KANSAS 219 

mired the keeper of the seal. They had merely 
misdirected indomitable high spirits, Anglo- 
Saxon seeking for adventure — the racial temper 
that urged to the ships of Humphrey Gilbert, the 
Hawkinses and Francis Drake, laughter-loving, 
imagination-driven youths of three hundred and 
fifty years ago ; a racial temper that, in our own 
years of 1917 and 1918, filled countless trans- 
ports to France with American boys whose 
record negatives the chart of every psycholo- 
gist ; imperturbably jovial, rivaling one another 
in making light of danger, independently con- 
structive and recklessly courageous in rushing 
to daring action. 

still, not all were giants in those eighteen- 
seventies. When our marvellous professor of 
English literature listened to a call to Philadel- 
phia, the administrative board chose to his place 
a man graduated from a college near the centre 
of Massachusetts; an oxlike creature of solid, 
well-knit, somewhat coram-nohis figure, with 
smiling eyes packed in adipose tissue and a 
ruddy beaming countenance whose shine no 
classroom disaster ever quenched. 

Some inexplicable fate, perhaps a mother, or 
spinster aunt, nursing ambitions for him, had 



220 EAELIEB DAYS AT 

projected him into the republic of books and 
learning, when nature plainly made him for a 
life of muscular activity. His peculiarity was 
that he had never been able to learn. 

In his senior class this man had a parcel of 
youngsters more or less Wertherian — Goethe's 
influence, his manysidedness and majestic per- 
sonality at that hour and for us were very real 
— youngsters again not merely gifted with that 
amazing self-confidence which is a guardian 
daemon of the young, but conscious of mental 
grasp by such little events as that at a com- 
mencement dinner where a state official declared 
the word education from the Latin e; to lead, 
and duco; forth. 

When we took up *^ Paradise Lost," the unique 
equipment of our new instructor first declared 
itself, he telling us in a sort of forehanded de- 
fense, a casting-up of breast-works or trench 
digging before an enemy, as it were, that he 
** believed the Garden of Eden story, and would 
prefer to be made of clay to descent from Plato's 
beatified oyster." In wordless courtesy we 
asked no questions about Plato's oyster. 

Then, the better to impress his position upon 
our understanding, he added; **I believe I be- 
lieve in the actual existence of Adam, Eve, the 
serpent and its wickedness in the Garden of 



THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS 221 

Eden, five thousand years ago, and truthfully 
depicted by Milton."* 

Any radicalism lurking in our midst could not 
misinterpret this endeavor to forestall theories 
of evolution we might be pleased to advance, or 
propositions that we were dealing with poetic 
myths and Adam might signify tribal distinc- 
tion. 

People of to-day who see principles of evolu- 
tion accepted by and a strong pillar of ortho- 
doxy, can not, I repeat, realize the fervor of 
those taking sides in those earlier days for and 
against the new evangel — then kept constantly 
before the world, as I have said on page thirty 
foregoing, by publications of Darwin, Wallace, 
Huxley, Tyndall and others. 

One day, in our analyses of *^ Paradise Lost," 
one of us suggested that the poem had as its 
basis a purely Manichean conception. *'Maniche- 
an" proved a corker. When, however, our guide 
found what the word connoted, he rejected the 
offer. 

Another time, upon our going from Milton's 
word-description of deity to painting and 
speaking of the great Italian, he asked if Michel- 
angelo had really painted deity. 

•These quotations were written down with pencil at the 
time. 



222 EAKLIER DAYS AT 

*^I would not paint a picture of God," he ex- 
claimed with a shudder, *^I would be deterred 
by a sense of the wickedness of it.'' 

Every class-hour brought its astonishment. 
One day our instructor spoke of Grote, the his- 
torian of Greece, and identified him with 
Grotius. 

* * * Hugo Grotius, the Dutch publicist, lived in 
the seventeenth century/ put in one of our 
number, ^and George Grote in London in the 
nineteenth.' " 

<< *Why,' ejaculated our poor pedant; *I 
thought Grotius was the Latin form of bis 
name !' Yes — ^hum, well, I'll look it up." 

Another chronology of his claimed that Con- 
fucius studied Aristotle. 

Individual treatments of Milton's religiosity 
and poetic genius have startled students else- 
where — for instance in Cambridge, Massachu- 
setts. But we in Kansas were trail-making, 
shaded by a university not two hundred and 
fifty, in fact not ten, years old, with nothing in 
our hands save a few books ; but in our heads 
intellectual vigor and will to find the best 
thought and written about subjects we under- 
took. 

Still, from our study of the sonorous Puritan 
we may have got as much as students sitting in 



THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS 223 

sight of John Harvard's statue and listening 
to a lecture, a part of which,* marked by a humor 
all its own, follows — the lecturer sitting on a 
low table, one knee curving over its corner, his 
right hand swinging a slender steel chain which 
described a circle at its end with a bunch of keys, 
and winding the chain over forefinger, first to 
right and then to the left : — 

** Personally I do not like Spenser, and Mil- 
ton is to me excessively unpleasant. Milton is 
trying to be a Puritan and an artist at the same 
time, and the two things do not, and can not, 
coincide — a conscious moral purpose minus any 
effort for artistic effect. 

* * To my thinking * Comus' isn't in it with * The 
Faithful Shepherdess.' A fellow like Milton 
that has bored me with * Paradise Lost,' and 
'Samson Agonistes,' I have absolutely no use 
for. When I read Milton, as I have to, I read 
him for study, not for enjoyment. I feel that 
Milton is rhetoric, just as Spencer is rhetoric. 
Take *L' Allegro,' 'Comus,' etc.; these are rhet- 
oric, jolly good rhetoric some parts of them, 
I should guess that *Lycidas,' and some few of 
Milton's sonnets, were some of the most spon- 
taneous things he ever did. He certainly wasn't 
spontaneous in * Samson ^^onistes,' althoiTs:h 

♦Taken down in shortihand. 



224 EAKLIEB DAYS AT 

he spoke out with a certain resonant bang. No 
one can be spontaneous who constructs a Greek 
tragedy on the plan of a Hebrew story." 



VI 

Those earlier, less organized days in Kansas, 
things material were more meager than now. 
Memories of the Civil War, its chastening sor- 
rows, still fresh, thankfulness for renunciations, 
for untenable sacrifices that had seemingly 
made our institutions permanent, warmed every 
heart. 

The people of the state who had fought were, 
in the large, knit in blood and gifted with An- 
glo-Saxon traditions and the spirit that formed 
our government and our English speech. A 
notable percentage of Celts had come, for the 
wave of Irish immigration had been rolling over 
the Atlantic close to a generation. And with 
the Celts^ racial adaptability and cleverness, 
they were merging, though keeping the sparkle 
of Celtic blood, with Anglo-Saxon pioneers. 

In those days, also, people of the German cur- 
rent sought the state's rich soil — a few owing 
to the German unrest of the eighteen-f orties ; 
other thrifty, staid soil-tillers from Prussia, 



THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS 225 

Hanover, Bavaria, many smaller states; and 
Austria, and Switzerland. A share of Scan- 
dinavians, too. 

Also there drifted in a qnota of Jews, who 
seemingly united theanselves with the general 
life; at least you saw and heard little of the 
idiosyncrasies which have made that people 
** boarders'' in w^hatever country they have 
wandered to and settled in numbers. 

Then, again the commonwealth had served as 
asylum for fugitive negroes before and during 
the war ; and now men, women and children fled 
to its bounties from hardships they deemed un- 
bearable ; one winter coming in carloads and des- 
titute of every necessity. 

The old, Free-State folks' helpfulness, even to 
giving of self still remained a spiritual treasure 
in Laurel Town, and housewives quick with pity 
for whomsoever they thought wronged, hastened 
to gather raiment for shivering bodies and to 
prepare food for empty stomachs. 

In years succeeding the Civil War, we say, 
fame of the opulent and idealistic soil of Kan- 
sas — the state's fight for freedom, the state's 
abounding lands — circled the earth and brought 
many from afar. Bohemians in colonies. Men- 
nonites from Russia, too, men of rough, austere 
faces, and stalwart forms clad in sheepskin coats 



226 EABLIER DAYS AT 

and high boots; women, with kerchiefs and 
shawls and countenances of meekness and resig- 
nation, weariedly tending round-eyed, docile 
children. 

They all sought liberty. Democracy is posi- 
tive, it points out how alike men are. Aristoc- 
racy, they had learned through suffering, is 
negative, it emphasizes men^s difference. Com- 
ing from Europe because of spiritual revolt 
against conditions thrust upon them there, they 
brought a soreness that had struck to their very 
marrow and become chronic. But in pursuit of 
working into concrete life a principle to which 
they had given their hearts, they brought also 
the indescribably splendid spirit of sacrifice for 
an idea — a gift given comparatively few coming 
to our shores the last half century. 

If some of these immigrants, unable to com- 
prehend what we Americans had forged in the 
fire of battle before they came — if they had no 
spiritual insight into what we meant to do with 
our possessions; if they became Americans in 
name only ; if they had none of our great tradi- 
tions, not a spark of that intellectual enlighten- 
ment and Anglo-Saxon constructive imagination 
that set up and maintained our Government; 
if they had no sense of the spirit that settled 
over our people after the sacrifices of the Civil 



THE UNIVEKSITY OF KAKSAS 227 

War — if, not understanding modernity, not gen- 
erative of ideas and lacking present-day out- 
look; if for a generation or two not compre- 
hending our institutions — many of these immi- 
grants had at least that marvellous spur, single- 
ness of heart, also courage and persistence, and 
they made good in many ways and weights ; they 
caught and carried on devotion to exalted ideals 
of the earlier settlers. 

So it happened that when the Anglo-Saxon 
state-huilders who had forged forward into the 
wilds where now stands Kansas, and had given 
the strength of their bodies to making the nature 
they found a shelter and support for later peo- 
ple — ^when the fiery chariot of their spirit, a 
** chariot of fire and horses of fire," bore these 
Elijahs heavenward, many differing folks, carry- 
ing many different bloods and traditions, took 
up their fallen mantles. 

Many differing ideas inflooding must bear 
vast meaning to a state's institutions. And to 
its university founded by Anglo-Saxon pioneers 
on Anglo-Saxon Puritan ideals; not within the 
first generation, may be, but when the inflood- 
ers' children's children shall discover treasures 
offered within its walls. 

For a decade after the Civil War race-senti- 
ment resurgent from battle-fields — American 



228 EAKLIEE DAYS AT 

sentiment — ^had force in studies at Laurel Town. 
Students inclined to seek the serenities of an- 
cient thought, to enlarge the present by going 
to the past and re-living the life of mankind; 
in the faith that the truest method of gaining 
ideas and sentiments worthy of assimilation 
lay in analyses of old Greek and Latin writers. 
*^It is in that golden stain of time" — RusMn 
voiced a conviction of theirs that they should 
not imprison themselves in their own age — 
**that we are to look for the real light, and 
colour and preciousness." And Shelley, *^Our 
laws, our literature, our religion, our arts, have 
their roots in Greece."* 

The university, poor in all but hopes and 
ambitions, met their needs. At its beginning 
somewhat after the expanse, mental temper and 
discipline of a college of the Atlantic slope, it 
gradually developed into a group of schools. 
One subject after another pushed open its doors. 

These reasonings of ours foreran Sir Henry Maine's 
famous definition which restated Shelley's; and Dr. Osier's 
cogent particularizing just now published: 

"One of the marvels, so commonplace that it has c^sed 
to be marvelous, is the deep rooting of our civilization in 
the soil of Greece and Rome — much of our dogmatic religion, 
practically all the philosophies, the models of our literature, 
the ideals of our democratic freedom, the fine and the tech- 
nical arts, the fundamentals of science and the basis of our 
law. The Humanities bring the student into contact with 
the master minds who gave us these things." 



THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS 229 

bearing claim for settled, benefactive residence 
on the ground that learning as a whole, and the 
amelioration of human beings in all life's rela- 
tions, should be a democratic university's field, 
not alone, as back in the centuries and in col- 
leges less intimate with the people, ancient 
classics and theologies, with mathematics, and 
possibly law, as ancillaries. 

This broad plea accorded with the ideals of 
the university's founders. They had doubtless 
wanted to make impossible overbearing of those 
literary and linguistic studies that degenerate 
into weak dilettantism and a self-complacent 
phrase-making which is the other half of steril- 
ity of thought. Even in the days when they 
wrought they heard criticisms of a salt-water 
college; ** Nothing to stimulate or develop the 
perceptions, and everything to suppress instinct 
and enthusiasm: one learned neither to see nor 
to feel." Warping and drying and then wrap- 
ping the intellect in spices, preserving merely a 
mummified semblance, the founders meant 
definitely to avoid. 

Recognition not only of the whole field of 
human knowledge, but also practical applica- 
tions of that knowledge as an ideal of university 
teachings, brought tremendous changes. It set 
aside old Greek and Latin studies as essentials 



230 EABLIEB DATS AT 

for a student. That, in one way, made the nni- 
versity more democratic; it meant the triumph 
of the utilitarian spirit; so far as it had then 
revealed itself. In another way the new order 
effected less democracy, for no longer could the 
institution train its students to the same uni- 
versal standards, give to all the same way of 
looking at Hf e, the same hroad, solid foundation 
of companionship. 

The new precept manifested, too, a further 
negative — that students might fail to gain his- 
torical perspective, might fail to acquire substi- 
tute for the stably grounded regard and reflec- 
tive knowledge of human institutions that the 
old classics, rightly taught, to those fitted for 
their teachings, instill — a vision essential to 
peoples of a democracy, for what futurists with- 
out wisdom of the past build is a structure on 
sand. 

The brave, old idea conceived in our English 
word learning, the calling to ourselves as chief- 
est study man, and man's life in the centuries, 
thus anaemically fading, students would come 
to differ from those of earlier years. Many a 
one had suffered stem, hard necessity — off- 
spring, perhaps, of the folk coming to our 
country after the Civil War, not of English 
speech, not of Anglo-Saxon blood, often filing 



THE UNIVEESITY OF KANSAS 231 

their claim for land and settling to wrest their 
livelihood from the soil ; a student who had been 
like a calf between two pails of milk, legends 
and traditions of his parents, traditions and 
legend of the people who had made this country 
desirable for his family to come to and stay by. 

He might seem incapable of reverence for the 
mighty feats of onr earlier generations, might 
rarely soften into gratitude for remembered 
travails of institutions which protected and sup- 
ported him, of even the very language he spoke. 
** Forgetting those things which are behind, and 
reaching forth unto those things which are be- 
fore,'' in this like the fiery practician we call 
Saint Paul, he might appear to think the earth 
and mankind did not exist before his advent, 
that was not his business, and to have little in- 
terest whether they went on after his exit. 

At the university numbers increased of men 
and women eager for utilitarian studies 
merely; seeking to gain money-making knowl- 
edge, *^ useful information'* solely; to learn 
only what would help them to speedy, easier- 
winning of practical things of life. Thought of 
fundamental brain-work in company of the 
forgers of the humanities, study for disciplin- 
ary and aesthetic values to lift high intelligence 
to yet greater heights, could seldom enter the 



232 EAKLIER DAYS AT 

estimate of such matriculates ; not because they 
lacked native ability, native insight, but because 
of the narrowness to which their lives had been 
constrained, because of the impatience and im- 
petuosity of youth — ^utilitarian needs having 
controlled their destinies, we say, withholding 
knowledge of and taste for the refinements of 
the humane order, and furnishing merely the 
positive, scientific, mathematical. 

Manifestly this zeal for the practical would 
give students a sobriety, a certain staidness, 
would hinder reversion to the broad youth-pro- 
longing stand of our Anglo-Saxon race, its shy, 
rollicking humor — ^that abundance and splendor 
of imagination which Sir Walter Raleigh em- 
bodied when he said he **shot at another mark 
than present profit." A young academic who 
had already gained knowledge of competitive 
business would naturally carry less effervescing 
spirits tban the earlier students^ 



vn. 

Years were going on and these students' 
world growing more competitive. Over a soil 
that had, until a generation before, known only 
the monopolies of Indian hunters and the herd- 



THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS 2'6'6 

ing of bison, pioneers were learning the secret 
of co-operation. The more aggressive Fanners' 
Alliance succeeded Grangerism. Prosperity 
was enlisting an army. Materialism setting aside 
spiritual estimates. Altruisms of the Anglo- 
Saxon state-makers retiring in shamefacedness. 
Sympathy with them becoming void. Of those 
two race instincts, idealism and utilitarianism, 
the second gaining headway — ^leading to the say- 
ing; **The trouble with thef Yankee is he rubs 
badly at the juncture of soul and body." 

Then, suddenly, a bursting of booms. Com 
at ten cents, or its use as a fuel. The birth, in 
1890, and on Kansas soil, of the People's Party 
through the cry of a gaunt, underfed farmeress 
pointing her finger at a politician of Jack Fal- 
staif girth and shrilling: 

''Say! You! It ain't no use you a-talkin', an' 
a-talkin', an' a-talkin'. You ain't never done 
nothin' for TJs ; an' you never will." 

And through the stump-speeches of a limber- 
tongued Irish agitatress; '*We must raise more 
hell ; and less com." 

New politics taught organization. Com- 
munity ideas strengthened. Sons and daughters 
of Grangers and Allied Farmers who, in in- 
fancy, had leamed lessons of co-operation, ac- 
celerated social unifying. Eeaction from the 



234 EARLIER DAYS AT 

overmastering solitariness of the Anglo-Saxon 
pioneers — a people, we must repeat, ill at bend- 
ing to concerted action, overwhelming individ- 
ualists earnestly seeking the right to life, lib- 
erty and the pursuit of happiness of our fore- 
parents; blotting out opportunism, expediency, 
puny practicality lying at hand; dreamers, yet 
swift and strong to dare and do — reaction was 
a rising tide. 

In the university many facts bore witness to 
the changing spirit. Loss of faith in the indi- 
vidual's spontaneously constructive exercise was 
one — loss of fervor for **hiking'' along country- 
roads in delight of fresh air and buoyant body, 
opening thoughts to solitary horizons, assim- 
ilating lore learned indoors while resting under 
a hedge or branches of an oak ; trudging, for in- 
stance, towards an oval mound stretching across 
the south-east prairie, virid with the many 
greens of tree and field and veiled in seductive 
sapphire haze ; or trending north-west to a tiny 
lake upon whose languid waters chinquapins 
rustled, vivacious teal sallied and wood-ducks 
preened their velvet feathers. 

The impossible happened. At an institution 
not fifty years founded by men and women who 
had gloried in loneliness of soul, and what they 
were able to accomplish through solitary 



THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS 235 

thought; in a state settled and developed by 
spiritual strength and independence of the in- 
dividual, sports, ritualized, supervised by a 
trained expert called coach, worked imperialis- 
tic way. Before sons and daughters of fanners 
who drove their own plough horses, a few some- 
times over-developed youths, to whom the coach 
gave his special attention, competed with 
strangers of identical experience ; while the ma- 
jority, athletes by proxy, now and then a pastry 
skin among them, sat hammering bleachers and 
yelling. The scene lacked little for recalling, to 
thinking minds, how certain dancers do the 
dancing of orientals, degenerated, who, them- 
selves, recline on cushions. 

Then, too, in this institution of greatest aspi- 
rations of the human spirit, numbers increased 
of those spending no little time in furbishing col- 
lege politics, getting out student publications, 
setting on foot dances and theatricals, in fact en- 
gaging so continuouslynn"^* business," and '^soci- 
ety," that the on-looker sometimes wondered if 
they really went to^he university to study. These 
absurdities of theirs may have been youngsters* 
attempts to act the role of ** live-wires;" imitate 
someone they admired in their pre-academic life. 
But the pity of the waste ! — ^pity that commer- 
cialism should negate a university's spiritual 



236 EABLIEB DAYS AT 

authority ! — pity that overseeing wisdom should 
not prevent division of attention and demand 
effort to the limit of the students' abilities! 
Even among boys and girls with the soundness 
of an agricultural democracy behind them such 
excesses must bring lower scholarship and in- 
ferior standards in their train. 

Clearer vision of ourselves we sometimes 
gain if we turn to others' environment : — Oxford 
and Cambridge Universities have for centuries 
lifted the life of England, rather of all Britain 
and her Colonies, through unbending devotion 
to their ideals of humanity; through their in- 
fluence upon students canying their spiritual 
seed to the people. A democratic university may 
lose this great cleansing and elevating influence, 
in part, if, stooping to subserve passing petti- 
ness, it leaves unexalted its own native rights. 



VIII. 

With an organizing of estimates in Kansas- 
increase of synthetic community-thinking which 
moves in emotionalized mass formation and dis- 
claims critical, analytical judgment (declaring, 
as one time it did, the personal point of view 
*^ bilious") — ^with the socializing of estimates of 



THE UNIVEESITY OF KANSAS 237 

the last decades of the nineteenth century, there 
also grew in the state abnormal regard for 
*^ popularity." 

What one generation will struggle for the 
next is apt to treat with neglect. That is, gen- 
erations more easily placed are prone to cast 
aside what their parents with abnegation won. 
The youngsters strike out seeking the opposite. 
** Natural resilience ;'' you suggest ; ** philosophic 
search for the novelty of change after finding 
the prevailing order's defects. Every age differs 
from the one which precedes it; a classic age 
swings to a romantic.^ 

We have seen certain reactions from the 
apostolic aloofness of mind and aloofness of ac- 
tion that distinguished early Kansas idealists — 
products, for clarity we repeat, of those Puritan 
teachings which through generations declared 
the world's well-being, its moral government in 
fact, to lie with each act of each man, woman and 
child. Bowing to ** popularity** witnessed an- 
other reaction. 

Shrines to the evanishing god rose on many 
house-hearths. Uncounted victims bled upon 
his altars. Not to be ** popular'' became exceed- 
ingly unpopular. Indeed, to cast the reflection 
of* * unpopular" on a person was notwholly unlike 
the old imputations of wizardry and witchery, 



238 EARLIER DAYS AT 

in that such reflections set the object a target 
for scoffs. The truth that only a fool sticks to 
hearsay, nur ein Narr bleibt hei ein Red/, fell 
forgotten. 

The craze affected even the fancied exalta- 
tions and serenities of academic life. As minds 
ran, report about a member of the faculty turned 
on whether he was *^ popular'* — no matter if he 
merely pursued an aggressive self-advertise- 
ment, or if he adapted himseK to shifting opin- 
ions and watched to seize opportunity, or lack- 
ing personal convictions avoided the friction 
that rises from loyalty to fundamental princi- 
ples. Whether ** popular'' among students, or 
their elders, it was not necessary to explain ; the 
use of the word, indefinite but a booster, cast 
a spell. 

A man may be popular for the reason Socrates 
was popular with young men of Athens — be- 
cause warming his heart and piloting his effort 
works the forward-looking, insistent conscience 
of the race ; because he loses the individual and 
utters the race voice. Then, again, he may be 
popular for the reason a street-corner faker who 
gives out lollipops is popular; or for the reason 
movies are popular. 

In Kansas ** popular" became a cabalistic, 
fairly hypnotizing word, we say. That is one 



THE tJNIVEESITY OF KANSAS 239 

of the dangers constantly threatening a de- 
mocracy's Thinking Shop — danger lest intellec- 
tual independence is not safeguarded; danger 
lest policy in following gusts of opinion pay bet- 
ter than principle; danger lest smooth, smug 
mediocrity of a handful of politicians dominate ; 
danger lest, timid as a hare at the onset of those 
seeking his job, a professor — of all men he who 
has devoted himself to the communication of 
truth ; danger lest he suppress his views to main- 
tain a colorless neutrality and give no point of 
attack. The character of a body rarely rises 
above the average of the individuals who form 
that body. 

Nowadays fashion among university teachers 
is to be wide-awake men ; half man of the busi- 
ness world with an eye on the practical, half 
theorist ; of the type of the engineer. Of neces- 
sity university pundits are practical in a de- 
gree. But they are identified with ideas; they 
are public employees, and, if loyal to their duty 
of the communication of truth, they must dis- 
cuss issues affecting all peoples of the earth. 
They should be leaders. Contentedly to in- 
terpret crudest ideas of a populace, to minimize 
the spiritual side of human life and rob life of 
lofty ideals, is an ignoble deed and must end in 
vulgarizing a university, in making Shop pre- 



240 F.AKT.TT.K DAYS AT 

dominate Thin'king. Perhaps \vliat James Rus- 
sell Lowell said of poets is true of professors ; 
''The reputation of a poet who has a high idea 
of his vocation, is resolved to be true to that 
vocation, and hates humbug, must be small in 
his generation." 

Worshipers of popularity ultimately cheapen 
to commonplace and lack the distinction of 
premiership. 



IX. 



Slogans serve weakness as well as strength in 
a democracv. Dailv cares, dailv needs, forbid 
our ubiquitous Master and Mistress Everybody 
from thinking out each matter put before them 
for consideration and action. But a thought, a 
truth, compressed into a gathering cry, is seeded 
among the people. Then does it motivate the 
mass. 

So with other catch-words. They pass from 
mouth to mouth and lead to deeds, and some- 
times no little work before developing into a 
truth or falling from corrupting falsehood at 
their core. How long they may need to find 
verity depends upon a people's earnestness and 
intelligence. We are still in that stage of de- 



THE UNIVERSITY OE KANSAS 241 

velopment when a lie may run the whole world 
round while Truth is putting on her boots. 

So it is distortions creep into history; 
histories great, histories small. Lovers of 
verity, workers for verity, all see that. A thing 
is done, for instance, you plant a young apple- 
tree. You say, ^'I am digging for its founda- 
tion, planting the tree in what folks say is a 
remote, soilless, unprofitable ground. But the 
sapling is of right grain and girth, and I have 
faith that weak as it is, it will, by the hand of 
God, grow to maturity, cheer men with its beauty 
and further men with its fruits/' 

The tree flourishes. 

Later comers on the earth, seeing its ample 
bowery and far-reaching aid to man, which in 
the planting were clear to long-visioned souls 
only — later comers seeing the beauty of its 
shade, and value to the state of its harvest, 
bunch hearsays and ascribe the humane vision 
and severe labor of the digging and planting to 
other than you, who remembered the thirteenth 
chapter of Luke and its mustard seed, ** which a 
man took and cast into his garden, and it grew 
and waxed a great tree; and fowls of the air 
lodged in its branches." 

The school of law had a real history like this 
of your hypothetical apple-tree. Later gener- 



242 EAELIER DAYS AT 

ations fell into the fallacy — a fallacy for tlie 
most part of the ignorant and shallow-minded — 
of taking a name familiar to their ears and 
round it grouping tales of affairs grown large 
and benef active. Philologists call such a proc- 
ess myth-making, and tell us that fancy plays 
in building a larger part than fact. Pity of it is 
that the myth-making not only sets forth an 
untruth, but destroys what Solomon called ^*an 
understanding heart," love of justice and truth ; 
ability to discriminate between truth and false- 
hood. * * Nobody can live long," wrote Dr. John- 
son, * Without knowing that falsehoods of con- 
venience or vanity, falsehoods from which no 
evil immediately ensues, except the general deg- 
radation of human testimony, are very lightly 
uttered, and once uttered are sullenly sup- 
ported." 

Solicitude for the foundation of the school 
of law led Judge Stephens through years to 
press forward needs of the state and the uni- 
versity. The past is mother of the future, and 
he was ever endeavoring to make experiences of 
the past build riches for the time to come. He 
believed every American should know general 
principles of law, that American citizens, ap- 
proaching manhood and womanhood, should 
know that the government of their country is a 



THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS 243 

Government of Law, that 'Hhe master they own 
is law," as an ancient Greek said of his country- 
men. Such knowledge would instil veneration 
for law, guard against violations of law, and 
show that enforcement of the law rests mainly 
with the people themselves. Fundamental ideas 
of law a school of law should oiier every stu- 
dent ; in addition to its peculiar learning for its 
own students. 

And consciousness that he could receive no 
personal benefit from the founding, knowledge 
that his connection with the school could be no 
other than that of urger and adviser of its in- 
ception, permitted him an expansive zeal and 
enthusiasm in furthering his ideas, and served 
to protect him from charge of self-seeking — an 
imputation rising easily in a commonwealth 
where conditions are not yet stereotyped, in a 
state to which later men have gone because they 
believed competition lighter there than in their 
old home and ** getting on" easier, acid jealousy 
eating its way to a greater role in life there than 
in less fluid conditions. 

Finally, in November, 1878, after advising 
with the administrative board, and after refus- 
ing their offer of deanship, Judge Stephens had 
the gratification of opening ^*the law depart- 
ment" for which he had through years labored. 



244 EARLIER DAYS AT 

**Tlie state owes to itself to adopt that policy 
which shall most advance the welfare of its in- 
habitants," he said in his address that evening*. 
** Knowledge of the law makes better citizens, 
more moral, more honest. . . .to love justice and 
hate iniquity the more." **It becomes of great- 
est importance that the educational institutions 
of our state. . .educate the people in knowledge 
of the law, not necessarily to make practising 
lawyers but to protect the state itself . . . that 
truth may prevail in the state's laws, and jus- 
tice increase and dwell among the people." 

Processes of evolution are slow, we have con- 
stantly to tell ourselves. Wherever men congre- 
gate, and human life is lived, Bodenstedt^s lines 
keep true ; 

"Wiho thinks the truth, 

Must hold the bridle in his hand; 

Who writes the truth, 

Must ready in the stirrup stand; 

Who speaks the truth, 

Must have on wings to flee the land."* 

♦In truth to Bodenstedt let us quote his idiomatic German : 

"Wer die Wahrheit denkf, 

Muss sein Pferd am Zugel haben; 

Wer die Wahrheit schreibt, 

Muss sein Fuss im Bugel hdhen; 

Wer sie ater spricht, 

Muss statt Fusse Fliigel haben. 



THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS 245 

But returns do hearten toilers for justice. 

The foundation of the university of a demo- 
cratic commonwealth is primarily to train men 
and vromen to living for things of the spirit — 
to preserve and inculcate all ancient truth and 
further all modem, to guide all people, of intel- 
lectual impulse enough to comprehend it, in 
the way of truth. Truth is the core of the uni- 
yersity's strength in all its functions, all its 
schools. Only through unfailingly serving truth 
can the university lead to the fulness of life 
truth brings. 

**To love the truth, to wish to know it, to 
believe in it, to work, if possible, to discover it ; 
to dare to look it in the face, to swear never to 
falsify, diminish, or add to it, even in view of 
an apparently higher interest, for no really 
higher interest can possibly exist," is as true 
for the university of a democracy in America, 
and at all times, as when in such sentences, 
Gaston Paris pleaded for truth's universality 
before the French Academy. 

**For the truth, it endure th; and is always 
strong,'' quoth Zorobabel of old, *4t liveth and 
conquereth for evermore." 



246 EABUER DAYS AT 

X. 

To see life objectively in Kansas is difficult. 
Absorbed in living it, you do not see the woods 
for the trees. In older communities where life 
is more in perspective, caste, artificiality, re- 
stricted opportunity, conditions are easier to 
pronounce upon ; manners, habits, usages, forms 
matured and established give a background and 
make the sketching in of characters easier. In 
Kansas you are confronted and confused by 
striking individualisms or socialisms. And each 
and every is busy. A Kansas child it was who 
caught up a popular hymn and sang: 

"There'll be humpin to do; 
If we all get to heaven, 
There'll be humpin to do." 

So in a utilitarian, alfalfa-enfolded university 
whose support has been through apportions by 
a biennial legislature, life can not be dull or 
without ideals. Life can not be dull or with- 
out ideals in any democracy, if its people 
have real life, real liberty and pursuit of real 
happiness in their hearts. And students of this 
university are democrats of democrats. An arid 
formalist might merely denominate them **good 
mixers;" a Henry James say, ** superabundant, 



THE UNIVEESITY OF KANSAS 247 

promiscuous democrats, without love of selec- 
tion/' Yet their instinct for the right probably 
tells them that the completest aristocrat is the 
completest democrat, and that this spiritual law 
holds in Kansas, as elsewhere ; that it is only the 
self-doubting democrat who is not an aristocrat, 
and only the self -doubting aristocrat who is not 
a democrat. 

Energetic these students ever have been, self- 
reliant to an amazing degree. Productive labor 
in which many of them engage, even in early 
youth, has given them well-trained senses and 
personal initiative. Then, a climate of the in- 
tensity of theirs must breed the adventurous. 
Their radiant strength, both of soul and body 
I would bear witness to, as I endeavored in The 
University of Hesperus. Added testimony a 
veteran lately gave me — ^how his marvellous 
physical vigor, gained in youth on a Kansas 
farm, earned money to take him through the 
academic course; and yet now sad poverty 
proved when midnight carriages rolled by bear- 
ing his classmates from dancing parties, while 
he had spent the evening studying in his attic, 
and — standing by an April garden he spoke — 
** without any daffodil." 

They breathe deep, these students, in a broad- 
chested way. Commonly they are low- voiced. 



248 EARLIER DAYS AT 

Their language a sturdy vernacular, English 
not debased by idioms from foreign tongues. 

If they produce, or when they produce, a liter- 
ature — for it is difficult to think a people, de- 
veloping from such forebears, in so distinctive 
a climate, should be sterile — their literature will 
have universality, largeness of appeal. They 
will prove the truth of George Sand's saying, 
**God reveals himself more and more to 
poets of the people and philosophers of the 
people." 

A literature which will attract by its elemental 
simplicity, I venture to predict. It will not de- 
light in the petty, superficial ; in wordy analyses ; 
in rhetorical tricks, cult of style for style's sake ; 
in virtuosity, financial elegance of manner made 
ridiculous by narrow spiritual range. Nor will 
it be bald, or barren. Springing in that en- 
vironment it will have intensity of feeling — tha^ 
one generator of thought which is real thought — 
and unswerving fidelity to the view of life of 
its people. It will be natural, independent, and 
far from insincerity and pretence. 

Love of Kansas — its lustrous sunlight and 
star-sown night-skies, its temperamental storms, 
the fountains and flora of its rolling earth — ^is 
born in its people, warms their blood, knits 
their bone, strengthens their muscle and height- 



THE UNIVEKSITY OF KANSAS 249 

ens their spirit to homage. Love of social test 
and experiment, also. They have their own 
•flair. ** Kansas folks," said doughboys, return- 
ing from France in 1919, to workers of the Kan- 
sas Welcome Association in New York, ^^ Kansas 
folks are home. They understand ; nobody else 
does." Emotions like these, seeking to express 
themselves through the medium of language, 
give a state its own individual literature. 

The speech of these students is English, I 
say, living speech, now and then strengthened 
by colloquialisms (a trace even of the archaism 
of the double negative) inherited from some 
county of England, or Scotland, or Ireland; 
racial crystals not yet shamed out of use by 
standardizing teachers and newspaper-reading. 
In other words the tang of home-spun phrase 
is in their tongue and has thus far escaped 
obliteration. 

*^He pronounced the letter R {lit era canina) 
very hard," said John Aubrey of John Milton, 
**a certaine signe of a satyricall witt." 

Students of the university pronounce the 
litera canina very hard; but it is not true that 
they have a satirical wit. Satire must have an- 
other horizon than the one in view. Absorbed in 
the juncture of their own heaven and earth, they 
are ardent, positive, constructive, optimistic, 



250 EABLIEE DAYS AT 

centered on what they are undertaking, thinking 
with their hearts as well as their heads. 

The look of their eyes I nsed often to wonder 
at. And, after years, I heard that others won- 
dered, too ; Les gargons ont quelque chose devant 
les yeux que nous autres nous ne connaissons 
pas, said a French surgeon in the summer of 
1918, after visiting boys like these of Kansas 
lying wounded in his hospital in Paris. Je ne 
sais pas si c'est Dieu, ou le President Wilson, 
oil la doctrine Monroe, mais c'est un ideal comme 
jamais je n' ai vu ma tongue vie. 

Life is to them an epic delight — ^broad pic- 
tures, childlike enthusiasms and faith in their 
deed. They are single-hearted utilitarians who 
have seized their life-career-motive, what youth 
and a striking readiness to measure practical 
values make plain is within their grasp. 

Wer sein seTbst Meister ist und sich heherrschen Tcann, 
Dem ist die iceite Welt und alJes unterthan. 

If any among them fail, it is doubtless from 
lack of singleness of purpose. 

People of the heroic age of Kansas bequeathed 
the university to those later forming the body- 
politic, and declared the institution necessary to 
the spirit of their commonwealth. They had 



THE TJNIVEESITY OF KANSAS 251 

settled on the land called Kansas delighting with 
the delight of Anglo-Saxons in state-building. 
Hostilities rose ; hostilities defying enumeration, 
defying definition in the vastness of their mean- 
ing to our nation's life. But those early people 
built on — built doggedly because, fired with a 
great imagination, they knew they built forever. 
**01d and early habits of conservative obedi- 
ence to . . . the laws under which they grew up 
and found both liberty and protection still cling 
to them," wrote a visitor among them in the 
winter of 1855-56. *^ Immigrants of so high an 
order in cultivation, natural ability, or energetic 
foresight and calculation, never before planted 
themselves as the nucleus of a new State." 



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